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GEO. E. VAROUNIS. ll.d. 



f 



GEO, E. VAROUNIS, ll.d. 



DOLLARS 



EDITED BY 

D. J. COYNE, Esq. 

BARRISTER 



J. HEWETSON & SON 
Printers and Publishers 
HAMPSTEAD, N.W.3 






By Transfer 

MAR 7 1921 



TO THE AMERICAN YOUTH 



An Open Letter to Mr. A. D. 



My Brother Friend, 

Doubtless you will recall my prophetic words regard- 
ing America's war policy, and my anticipations that the 
result would inevitably lead to political defeat. 

I knew you as a war enthusiast, a real American 
patriot with a patriotism devoid of all personal interest, 
and I honoured you for your strenuous defence of your 
views. 

But time has shown that I was right. 

I regret, for America's sake, that all my worst fears 
have been realised. 

I knew America well, and in my esteem she stands 
first amongst the nations. 

I am thoroughly American in sympathy, and more 
American perhaps than her professional patriots. 

But it is clear to me that America fell into a military 
trap. 

Roosevelt, who was your national leader, and a good 
soldier, was relegated to the position of a simple propa- 
gandist for the President's policy, and this great 
American's initiative and foresight were thus lost to his 
country. 

I looked on the President as a master of empty 
phraseology, as the political parrot of a golden gang, 
as a calamity for America. 



I saw and understood that he could have helped the 
Allies without ruining America first and her Allies 
later on. 



A mighty heap of gold has been amassed by the war 
instigators, while the warrior heroes are to-day in panic, 
with souls overfed with phrases and with stomachs 
which are empty. 

The once free American people are to-day suppressed, 
terrorized. 

There is no more free opinion ! 

The traditional constitutional rights, the people's 
rights, are gone. 

Republic and Democracy are mere empty words, — 
mere political nonsense. 

America is in an hysterical stage of fear. 

The blood of the people has been poured out in 
streams in order to create an autocracy with tyrannic 
audacity and despotic dreams. 

Theatrical dictatorial parades and trips have as 
epilogue the perpetration of the agony and misery of 
the European peoples, and the surviving heroes of the 
battle line have as consolation military baubles with 
which to deck their breasts. 

Europe to-day confuses America with her rulers, and 
a tragical outcome of this misunderstanding may be the 
result of pursuing a policy at once cynical and brutal. 

America belongs to the American people, and not to 

democratic gold lords. 

* 
# * 

The President, on the occasion of the last senatorial 
elections, asked the American people to elect democratic 
senators in order to complete his dictatorial power, and 
so dispose of the people's will, as the Kaiser did in 
Germany ! 

The credulity of the people has no limit. 



Each war is the prologue to the next. 

The day is not far distant when the American people 
will know the truth, and every sincere admirer of 
America will pray that the truth may be known before 
it is too late. 

The European people are to-day leading their leaders. 
Germany, Austria, Russia, are free. 

False autocratic idols are gone for ever. 

The small nations are free and independent. 

Europe's downfall is in truth a regeneration. 

The sun of real liberty is rising. 

America will join Europe when the American people 
will lead their leaders. 

Then may America hope to accomplish her mission 
for mankind — union — for which the American people 
fought. 

Suffering compels people to meditate, and to-day the 
mentality of the peoples is ripe for meditation. 



^ 



s 



FROM MY DIARY ABOUT 
AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN TRADE. 



American and European Trade. 

A wave of feeling prejudicial to Americans and their 
trading methods now sweeps across Europe. 

To those speculators of doubtful origin with whom 
the Europeans transacted business this prejudice is 
entirely due, and not to the real Americans, the Yankees, 
as we call them, who generously offered their lives and 
fortunes in a strenuous fight for an ideal. 



The European has discovered to his cost a new and 
special class of American trader — one who in pre-war 
days was an honest domestic merchant, but whose men- 
tality was so changed by his war opportunities that he 
developed into an autocratic parvenu and nouveau riche 
camouflaginghis unscrupulous methods under his so-called 
American nationality, thereby discrediting American 
Trade, and victimizing honest European buyers who, 
confiding in American integrity placed their interest in 
his hands. 

These unscrupulous traders, safe in the belief that 
the four thousand miles which divided them from 
their European dupes rendered legal proceedings 
doubtful, if not impossible, are pushing their audacious 
methods to a degree that is surprising. 

Let us suggest a remedy for this serious state of affairs. 

The American official Trade organizations, Chambers 
of Commerce, Consulates, as well as Banking, Industrial 
and other American institutions, must create a kind of 



arbitration centre— in London preferably, because of the 
common language and similarity of mentality — publish a 
responsible journal capable of forcing these unscrupulous 
traders to cease their schemes by disclosing their methods, 
to all official European Trade organizations and their 
members, these latter being numbered by thousands. 

The fact is, no honest trader fears publicity ; the poor 
are victims of the rich, to whom justice belongs, and 
the biggest capital is confidence, which is created by 
honest work. 



Between a moral standing and a financial one there 
is an enormous difference. 

Frequently the largest and richest concerns make the 
worst commitments ; for often the principals or direction 
of large organizations know little or nothing as to how 
their managers abroad conduct their business, but relying 
upon the false statements of their managers, victimize 
their customers and discredit themselves, and all in 
good faith. 

American Banks and Mercantile Agencies are issuing 
letters of reference for the best or worst concerns with 
rating more or less correct, and very often American 
concerns in connection with directors of large American 
Banks in Europe have, without the knowledge of the 
head direction in America, cheated European buyers in 
transactions of the greatest importance. 

The financial standing of a concern, as reported by its 
banking connections, is not sufficient, as many banks 
are directly or indirectly interested in commercial 
institutions, such banks very often giving false reports 
to the Mercantile Agencies. 

The victims are always the buyers. 

In many American Commercial and Banking institu- 
tions abroad the managers and the personnel are often 
foreigners, or foreign Americans, or the business of 
American houses is handled through European concerns. 
Serious blunders are frequently committed in the tran- 
saction of business, which blunders cast a slur on the 



capacity of American organizations as reflected in their 

foreign branches. 

# 

# # 

If America desires to develop her foreign Trade she 
must do so on lines different from those on which her 
domestic cash with quick return business is based. 

This cash with quick return method simply means 
for the foreign Trade robbing the customer regardless of 
what — when — and how, what quality of goods, when 
delivered and how goods are packed and shipped. 

If America seeks permanent foreign business it must 
keep its foreign customers and make of each customer 
a propagandist, a collaborator, co-interested and an 
associate in its Trade. 

Quick return methods mean one transaction only — 
mean speculation and gambling. 

The customer may be likened to a mine producing 
permanently, provided the preparatory work is properly 
done. 

This conception was one of the basic principles 
which gave such strength to German trade. 

The Germans, in securing their foreign customers, 
promoted their business by considering their customers 
in the light of associates, and based their commercial 
spirit on honesty and on future and permanent business. 

Even if the first transactions were not satisfactory from 
the point of view of profit, they were not discouraged. 
Rather were they stirred by their spirit of patience to 
develop, to organize, to progress, and to win. 

Their commercial discipline and education were 
surprising. They became masters of the world's Trade 
because honest work found opportunities everywhere. 

The world is an unlimited field, and to the honest 
traders are the best places. 

To America still belongs the opportunity of retaining 
her supremacy, though she let slip the best moment 

for securing the world's markets. 

# 

* # 

There is no question that War Profits have changed 
the American Trade mentality. 

13 



A pre- War trader honestly handling thousands in his 
business became in war time an autocratic speculator 
dealing in millions. The war found America unpre- 
pared for foreign Trade. The inexperience and the 
traditional mentality created by domestic Trade produced 
a sort of speculative mind in foreign transactions. 

Export became a mania — an epidemic. 

If only a commercial genius could have arisen to 
organize and systematize this newly created com- 
mercial spirit, and co-ordinate a banking system for 
foreign Trade, America would have led, and would have 
continued to lead, the commercial world. 

Unfortunately this spirit, strong and uncontrolled, 
entered the speculative field and has left a legacy of 
new standardized millionaires to represent, or mis- 
represent, America's Trade interests abroad. 

# 

* # 

Governmental restrictions of a severe nature during 
the last period of the War produced a kind of reaction 
for a time, and private speculation was replaced by 
speculation in War supplies. 

In this transitory War Trade period, the worst specu- 
lation was disguised under official prestige for the benefit 
of a privileged group of traders who succeeded in pene- 
trating the official Trade coulisses. 
# 

# * 

American Trade eagerly awaited the advent of Peace 
in order to resume this foreign business which had left 
so many incomparably attractive souvenirs to thousands 
of nouveau riche traders. 

The word preparedness was the note of the whole 
commercial press, but how many fine plans and 
schemes came to nought on the sudden and unexpected 
announcement of the Armistice ! 

How pitiful that this high commercial American spirit, 
this national, frank, conscientious mentality should be 
obliged to look on while its work was being undermined 
and threatened with destruction by a criminal gang of 
unscrupulous traders who, placing their own interests 
before national and international principles, regarded 



with cool and cynical indifference a bleeding Europe 
and a sacrificed America. 



One common ideal guided the high-minded American 
element regardless of these inevitable evils which they 
tolerated with evident contempt in war time, yet these 
evils, from their very nature, have become a danger to 
the national life, and must be uprooted at once, and at 
any cost, before like an undermining stream, they menace 
the foundations of the huge social, commercial and 
industrial life of America. 



How easy money was made during the war when 
with a single cable quotation a confirmed irrevocable 
credit was opened by the European buyers, payable 
irrevocably and according to the market needs, against 
inland bills of lading or factories (often located hundreds 
of miles from a port), against warehouse receipts, 
ocean bills of lading, and very often the European 
buyers were paying cash with order even before the 
goods were manufactured. 

This easy moneymaking spoilt the A merican mentality. 
The European buyer was the victim while the American 
trader was the controller, getting his money cash 
regardless of when, what and how. 

How many buyers received their goods after the 
Armistice when the price of the goods dropped twenty- 
five to fifty per cent. ? 



Huge quantities of goods bought and paid for by 
European buyers were confiscated, huge quantities were 
never shipped owing to railroad Government control, 
steamers, or any kind of vessels under construction, were 
confiscated or their construction stopped, or in some cases 
delivery only permitted after the Armistice, when prices 
dropped fifty per cent., and in spite of all, European 
Trade bore these ills very patiently because America was 
sacrificing her own interests in order to help the Allies. 



Yet, as has been said before, one class of privileged 
traders speculated and enriched themselves to the dire 
hurt of American Trade, both domestic and foreign. 

« 

* * 

Enormous profits were realized, not only in the 
merchandizing, but also in the shipping and insurance, 
and these profits formed a heavy contribution on the 
part of European buyers to American shippers. 
European Trade, once more awake, finds itself face to 
face with a terrible reality, which makes it sceptical for 
the future. 

Confidence has been lost, and to regain it American 
Trade must see to it that its methods are honest, must 
with a stern hand undo the wrongs inflicted on its victims, 
must — in fine — leave no stone unturned to wipe out a 
reputation inimical to its foreign Trade relations, and 
to its national reputation. 

# 

# * 

The long awaited Armistice arrived suddenly to find 
both the American Trade and Government unprepared. 
The result was a panic in the shipping, insurance, 
banking and trade circles. 

Fortunately, American Trade was strong enough to 
support this sudden shock without any great effort; only 
a certain class of traders collapsed. 

Enormous production in some industries with in- 
sufficient outlet for the moment — markets in a state of 
panic — foreign buyers frightened by the sudden change 
of affairs, abandoned contracts — foreign banks revoked 
credits and guarantees with resulting bankruptcies. 

Chaotic international conditions. 

The prompt signing of the Peace Treaty was regarded 
as something of a consolation for the future. 

Europe was exhausted. 

Buying was reduced to the smallest dimensions, and 
competition started immediately. 

Clever English traders, safeguarded by their national 
trading principles, commenced a competition a Poutrance 
with all the means at their disposal, discouraging 

16 



prospective buyers with real or imaginary quotations, 
both in shipping and trade. 



English propaganda was both clever and effective, 
though deliveries were limited in amount. 

American trade is handicapped in the matter of 
deliveries by its distance from Europe, which means not 
only problematic and non-guaranteed deliveries, but 
often no deliveries at all. 

There are also the heavy shipping and insurance 
expenses, and the monetary system which puts the cost 
price of American goods in a position of great dis- 
advantage, as the quality of certain classes of goods 
cannot claim such a superiority as to neutralize the 
expenses of shipping and insurance. 

It must be admitted that the quality of the average 
American goods is very inferior to the corresponding 
class of European productions, and American manu- 
facturers, exporters and shippers, must seriously consider 
imprc , ements in their quality and in their packing and 
handling methods. 

Though European buyers are in dire need of supplies, 
yet they will only buy now from America when they 
find it impossible to procure their goods elsewhere. 

American goods are, for the moment at least, 
considered in the light of a necessary evil. 

A bad war time reputation militates seriously against 
American interests in the European commercial field 
where, under happier relations, the possibilities are 
unlimited. 



The exchange situation arose suddenly and un- 
expectedly to complicate an already embarrassing state 
of things, causing chaotic conditions of international 
business relations. 

But where lies the mystery of this exchange which 
has been the subject of such profound metaphysical 
analyses ? 



The around the gold traders, the international 
treasurers know all about it well, while the victimised 
trading public is in the dark, little thinking that it is their 
own property, their own money, which attract the 
gambler and the speculator. 



II. 

Exchange. 

What is money ? 

Money is an instrument of exchange of conventional 
value in the form of metals, more or less precious, and 
paper, which represent merchantable productions and 
wealth with a conventionally organized system of inter- 
national monetary exchange known as banking. 

All these conventional systems have the Government's 
official prestige, the Government being the representative 
of the people's power, and official manager of the 
national wealth and production of each country. 

The exchange in trading power of national wealth 
(production) of each nation is reflected in the international 
exchange. 

Then, in order to give a value to money we must have 
production to sell. 

Consequently, productive countries can accumulate 
the money of the non-productive countries whose 
lack of production causes the depreciation of their 
monetary system in foreign exchanges. 

* 
* * 

If we compare France with Germany now, we find 
that while behind the franc there is a very limited 
number of factories, insufficient labour, and very 
limited production of raw material, with no encouraging 
future prospects, behind the mark there is an unlimited 
number of well-organized factories, with sufficient skilled 
labour waiting to start and produce. 

But Germany needs raw material "which America can 
furnish. 

18 



German money at the moment representing no 
production is almost worthless, but it can regain its 
worth as soon as production starts. 

Germany's well organized pre-war foreign Trade will 
start once more to export and sell its productions and to 
import foreign valuable money which represents wealth. 



America is now face to face with this dilemma, i.e., 
whether it is her duty to promote the interests of a danger- 
ous competitor who possesses so many advantages owing 
to her monetary system, her labour conditions, her tra- 
ditional experience and reputation, her hard-working 
people, her organization which in pre-war days controlled 
the world's Trade, and finally, her geographical situation. 
But the fact is that Germany is an asset for the Allies, 
being their debtor, and as the Allies in turn are in the 
position of debtors to the United States it follows that 
someone must help Germany to work and pay in order 
that the Allies may discharge their duties to America 
by means of the German payments to themselves. 
Hence, by not helping Germany, America hurts herself 
and ruins her Allies. 



But from another point of view it is of vital necessity 
to America, and may be its duty, to help Germany now 
and control its trade. 

America can furnish Germany with the raw materials 
and take payment in manufactured goods, thus giving 
immediate value to the German exchange. 

The German export Trade possesses a complete 
organization with special buyers for each country, and its 
reputation abroad stands very high indeed. 

Germany cannot remain indefinitely in its present state. 

If to-day Russia is a danger for Europe, and later a 
danger for America, it is clear that Germany will serve 
as an intermediary to spread the contamination. 

Is it seriously proposed to abandon a nation counting 
scores of millions of inhabitants to misery and starvation ? 

19 



America is protecting her own trade only for the 
moment, and it is certain that a clever rival and com- 
petitor, which is England, will get hold of the German 
Trade. 

* 

# * 

Immediately on the conclusion of the Armistice England 
started a large trade with Germany and the doors are now 
shut on America owing to the exchange. 

The non-trading with Germany now is a negative 
protection for American trade. 

Furthermore, America has a sacred duty to help now 
as amongst her best citizens are no less than twenty 
millions Germans or citizens of German origin who 
have contributed largely to America's wealth and glory. 

* 

# # 

Why is the German paper money which represents a 
certain wealth considerably lower in value than the 
French ? 

Because of speculation. 

Speculation begins the moment a nation loses its 
national self-respect through defeat in war. 

War is a commercial struggle, a competition for the 
control of the international trading exchange. 

Germany to-day resembles an honest trader on the 
verge of bankruptcy : it has lost international credit and 
confidence, but still possesses all the strongest vital 
elements in abundance. 

Europe can never regain its trade equilibrium while 
Germany remains a wreck, with Austria in agony and 
Russia a source of international danger. 

It is of the utmost importance for the common welfare 
of Europe that Germany shall have help to economic 
success. 

Results will show that Germany once more started 
on the upward grade would effectually suppress the 
Russian danger and restore Austria. 

# 

# # 

If this war had, as its chief aim, the suppression 
of Prussian militarism with its basic principle, that 



might is right, and if the present American policy 
unwittingly results in the torturing of innocent people 
misled and deluded by a gang of autocratic despots, 
surely the German people to-day have every right to be 
helped ? 

America's entry into the war was advertised as a 
moral crusade with a mission to make the world safe for 
democracy, 

Moral principles are imposed by self-sacrifice and 
altruistic work, and not by force and brutality, which 
mean the negation of all humanitarian principles. 

But if this war, while suppressing Prussian militarism 
has created a golden militarism, an around the gold 
autocracy with the same slogan Gold is Might and Right, 
dare we not suggest that this great struggle has been in 



America at the moment guided by a few war 
millionaires has committed moral suicide, and the 
American people, alone among the nations of the earth 
in their ignorance of the words " hate " and " revenge," 
are now trying to employ the same principles of moral 
decadence for the annihilation of which the flower of 
their manhood offered their lives. 

Those who love and esteem America must pray that 
the spirit of Roosevelt, of some real American patriot, 
may guide her and keep untarnished the glory of that 
gigantic struggle in which she poured out her blood and 
treasure for an ideal ; may purge her of those infamous 
trading gangs whose nefarious practices abroad have 
besmirched her fair name ; and may help her to stay 
with the Allies in their mission of healing and guarding 
the helpless, until the end. 



III. 

If every American business man engaged in foreign 
trade were to write the story of his experiences, there 
would be a consensus of opinion that the ruin of American 



foreign Trade and shipping was entirely due to the 
policy of the Government. 

# 

# * 

The Armistice followed after a business deadlock 
which ruined thousands of exporters. 

The newly created ambition for foreign Trade was 
gradually dying out. 

* 

* * 

Before the Armistice when an export licence was 
granted, an import licence was required, and when this 
was obtained the shipping permission was indispensable. 
In the meantime, the export licence was expiring, or the 
credit or the import licence cancelled, or some new 
restriction or prohibition announced; thus was American 
Trade penalised. 

American commerce was placed under the control of 
Foreign Allied Commissions, which granted permissions 
and privileges according to the financial and political 
standing of the exporting house. 

We know how the clever British letter of assurance 
system, controlled by the British Admiralty, protected 
its own trade before that of others. 



Abroad I met several American business men going 
on their business pilgrimage full of a touching faith in 
that mythical period of reconstruction so ably advertised 
by the American trade preparedness. 

The most sceptical of business men seemed for the 
time imbued with a confidence inexplicable in its sincerity. 

But unfortunately for them, the President had already 
prepared the catastrophe of the exchange. 



I obtained permission from the United States Shipping 
Board during the war to build five wooden steamers 
under a foreign flag in connection with a shipbuilding 
company located in Seattle. 

The price fixed by the United States Shipping Board 
was one hundred and sixty dollars per ton dead weight. 



The European buyers confirmed the deal through the 
Bank B.B.B. 

The President of the Shipbuilding Company was the 
shipbuilder himself, a plain and good hardworking 
carpenter. 

Some Europeans connected with a Foreign High 
Commission induced him to join a broker to whom they 
were supposed to pass an official order for these vessels 
at one hundred and eighty dollars per ton. 

The poor American worker was fooled to that extent 
he lost his opportunity for this one hundred and sixty 
dollars per ton deal, the Armistice surprised him with 
empty ways and the drop in the price of wooden vessels 
finished the balance. 

I remember his innocent attitude and his plain answer 
to my just arguments. 

You are not a Frenchman — he is. 

Being a Frenchman at that time meant for the 
Americans a super-man ! 

* * 

The huge plans set on foot for preparedness and Trade 
propaganda, with special Trade commissions, exhibitions, 
travellers' service, and similar things, have come to 
nought owing to the exchange. 

America has much need of foreign Trade organization 
— her present prosperity is false. 

The huge American productions must either secure a 
permanent outlet and a gradually increasing volume, or 
be restricted very seriously. 

But America must not wait till the last moment. 

* * 

The Exchange now began to destroy business. 
At first there were rumours that the Exchange would 
be re-established. 

Buyers were advised by their banks to wait. 

America is here to help. 

Wait ! 

But meanwhile the dollar went higher and higher. . . . 

No patience, no nerves on either side. 

33 



Stubborness and mistrust which brought heavy losses 
to American and European private Trade. 

No union between American banking and trading. 

In Europe banking promotes Trade, which means 
credit. 

In America trade creates banking, which means cash. 

When an American bank is closely interested in some 
foreign business the results are disastrous. 

American banks look at business from a different 
angle to that of the European banks. 



Americans were spoiled by the excessive war profits 
— they learned the meaning of profits, but have yet to 
learn what losses mean. 

Now they start to make their serious training in 
foreign Trade and finance, and if they find the effects 
of the exchange discouraging, the responsibility is their 
own or rather, their Government's. 



Paris became for a period after the Armistice the 
European commercial centre. 

The headquarters of the official commissions for the 
Peace Conference, and all the Trade commissions were 
located in Paris. 

Business propositions poured in from all parts of the 
globe. 

Germany was still closed. 

Roumania was open for large business. 

England, Canada, and Spain took advantage of the 
American situation and accepted all the transactions 
refused by America. 

I succeeded, personally, in closing a deal for a large 
shipment of raw sugar for Galatz, to the value of one 
million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, payable 
in dollars against shipping documents, and another with 
the Roumanian Government for a large quantity of shoes, 
payable in Roumanian Government Bonds, which deal, 
refused by my American bank, was taken up by a 



Canadian bank, which later took another contract for six 
hundred thousand pairs. 

Some other propositions, the one offering twenty- 
five per cent, cash, and the balance guaranteed by- 
banks, and deposit in Roumanian money and Govern- 
ment bonds or real estate mortgages, for permanent 
sound business, and the other based on similar terms for 
the establishment of a shipyard in Roumania, and 
supplies of all kinds of structural material and machinery 
in connection with a first-class old banking house, were 
unacceptable, being considered too complicated for 
American Trade mentality, but were taken by other 
European banking houses, and especially British. 

# 

# # 

Paris is not a city in which Americans can acquire the 
necessary training in foreign commerce, nor is it the 
place in which American officials can best study 
European conditions and opinions. 

Paris is a city of pleasure. 

We know from experience the kind of life which large 
numbers of Americans pass in Paris, located in luxurious 
hotels, surrounded by pleasures and distractions of all 
kinds. 

An American news correspondent has placed on 
record his views that the American in Europe loses his 
morals and his ethics, and returns home a different 
being ; but in this context the word Europe must be 
replaced by Paris to be entirely correct. 

Certain Americans, intoxicated in every sense by the 
luxury of their living, write their opinions about 
European Trade conditions ! 

# 

* * 

It must be admitted that the French people are not a 
business people, as the English and German people are. 
America must very soon decide her Trade policy. 
France has always been the victim of other nations in 
her Trade relations. 

Before the war German Trade was at home in France 
— may be it will be so again. 



The woman in France absorbs all the vitality and 
activity of the man, for whom pleasure is before business. 

She is his only life ideal. 

The French people are too refined for the Americans. 

They do not understand business as the Americans 
understand it to be a reality. 



IV. 

France before the war was exporting capital to every 
country, financing foreign enterprises from Panama to 
Alaska, from South America to Russia, from the Far 
East to the Near East. 

French engineers and contractors contributed largely 
to the world's progress and civilization. 

# 

# # 

French contractors and capitalists were the pioneers 
of the world's engineering achievements, and in that 
capacity American Trade must study thoroughly the 
advantages to be gained by having as co-operator a 
nation which was, is, and will be, the leader of the most 
important engineering enterprises in the world. 

America has many lessons to learn from Europe in 
the matter of her foreign Trade. 

Without sacrifice and courage foreign Trade is 
impossible. 

# 

# # 

A French contracting company with which I was 
connected before the war, advanced over sixty million 
francs to Servia, for her second war against the Bulgars 
in the first Balkan War, being interested in large rail- 
road contracts in Servia — this meant a real sacrifice on 
the part of the company — and the same company 
deposited a large sum as guarantee to the Bank of Creta 
for a railroad franchise, despite the unsettled conditions 
in Creta in 191 2, where revolutions were almost daily 
events. 

Such acts show unusual business nerve and courage. 

26 



America's domestic Trade is well organized, but its 
foreign Trade is yet in its infancy. 

Happily, America possesses healthy and strong youths 
in abundance, dowered with ambition and intelligence. 

America stands unrivalled for her business system. 

Foreigners in America are confronted with a stubborn 
resistance to their procrastinating business methods. 

In America business men look for immediate results 
— quick returns. 

For them the expressions " will be " or " has been " 
have no signification. 

What is to be done at the actual moment is the only 
thing that matters. 

The European who is wont to build airy speculative 
propositions will find himself suddenly brought to earth 
by the terse request of his American friend to come down 
to business. 

A High European Emissary was telling me, they don't 

give us any time to reflect or to decide : you have to answer 

at once "yes " or " no." 

* 
# # 

Very few of the new American export houses are 
well-organized. 

They are still very much behind compared with the 
German, French, or British houses. 

In those American houses in which the managers and 
personnel are of German origin, the methods and 
organization are best. 

In those large war concerns whose business grew to 
such proportions as a result of hostilities in Europe, a 
looseness of control was noticeable, and owing to want 
of business discipline heavy losses were made in foreign 
business. 

Several exporters made very substantial profits in 
business due entirely to close personal control, but 

27 



being obliged by the growth of their Trade to delegate 
their powers to others, soon found themselves, owing to 
serious losses, obliged to reduce their organization within 
the limits of personal control. 

This shows that a well trained and reliable personnel 
for foreign Trade is rare in America. 



A well-known American business man, adopted 
the system of having partners instead of managers- 
there are, ten or twelve partners closely interested. 

The success of the firm is entirely due to this system, 
which was also successfully worked in France and 
Germany 

# 
* * 

I have known managers of large concerns who have 
taken propositions to rival concerns where they found 
a better salaried position. 

The system, popularly termed " double-crossing," is 
the rule rather than the exception. 

The personnel of the old German American houses, 
which passed by force into American hands, were 
replaced by non-experienced staffs of young managers. 

These old houses owed their marked success to the 
excellence of their staffs, who were zealous, faithful, and 
above all, experienced in their duties. 

I have known a doctor and a musician to have 
been promoted directors of a large exporting house ! 
Such are the changes brought about by war conditions. 
The prejudice and ill-will shown to the so-called 
American aliens developed to such an extent that 
injustice to the non-responsible American alien citizen 
was pushed to extremes in many instances, with the 
obvious intention of appropriating their businesses. 

A certain class of American grafters became 
capitalists with their victims' money. 



28 



VI. 

Europe, and especially France, were over-advertised 
or falsely advertised by the official war propaganda in 
America. 

France served as an inspiring ideal during the war for 
every war purpose, not only in America, but everywhere. 

The American business men located in Europe during 
the war and accumulating easy money there, were 
contributing to dispel this ideal, and were preparing 
their countrymen for America's entry into the war, which 
was hailed with enthusiasm as a great money-making 
opportunity. 

# 

# # 

During the period immediately preceding America's 
entrance into the war, Governmental restrictions on 
both sides (British letters of assurance, import licences, 
export licences, special freight permission, special shipping 
permission, special insurance, etc.), and the establishment 
of the so-called Allied High Commissions rendered 
foreign business very difficult, if not impossible. 

The Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation 
and Chartering Committee controlled the entire shipping 
and ship-building business while the War Trade Board, 
Food Administration in connection with the Cable Censor 
— both shipping and merchandizing — controlled 
American business entirely. 

Severe control from the Allied official commissions, 
and especially from the British, was imposed upon 
American foreign Trade. 

The policy of the American Government towards 
its own Trade was disastrous, and its ill effects are 
now felt by the entire world, and especially by 
Europe, and later on America herself will feel them. 

# 

# # 

Every American business man at home or abroad 
considered Europe a commercial heaven. 

29 



The Armistice came and the expected continuance of 
this gold-mining enterprise stopped short, due to the 
American want of experience, miscalculations, exaggera- 
tion in political methods and plans, and to international 
schemes of such huge proportions, as to place them 
beyond the grasp of a European mentality tired after 
five years of warfare and eagerly awaiting a fresh 
display of that altruistic generosity promised by America 
and practised by her during the war. 

America's failure to fulfil these hopes ; all these 
political misunderstandings, aggravated by the non- 
signing of peace; the unsettled European situation and 
exchange, created a Europe hostile to everything 
American, and this hostility was cleverly fanned by 
political trouble-makers and speculators who, profiting 
by the inevitable mistakes made during the war, 
struggled by all means to keep American Trade entirely 
out of Europe, giving the European Trade to understand 
that American Trade must be considered only in the light 
of a present necessary evil (Europe being obliged to buy 
from America as at the moment she could not buy else- 
where) and to the American Trade that Europe is a 
worthless field for its business operations. 



The American business man after the Armistice, con- 
fident in the political influence of America in Europe, 
certain of continuing his war profits, and influenced by the 
travelled American opinion in the belief that Europe, ex- 
hausted during the war, would need American assistance 
and protection more than ever, started his business trips 
around Europe, only to find himself face to face with a 
terrible reality created by his own Government, and an 
equal terrible reality in finding himself in the presence 
of a commercial atmosphere where business was difficult, 
if not impossible, and where the impatient American 
temperament found itself in collision with the super-easy- 
going European man of affairs. 



30 



American business men need training in patience if 
they want to be understood in European business, which 
is really a large asset for American Trade. 

In Europe those Americans established in business 
during the war are slowly disappearing. 

They have not the patience to stay and struggle 
during this critical period created by their own domestic 
politics to the utter ruin of American foreign Trade. 

# 

# * 

War enthusiasm with its nice moral phraseology, 
and the inspiring belief that America was about to 
control the world's trade, and shipping, have given 
place to depression, disappointment, disillusionment and 
mistrust. False ideals and illusions created during the 
war are disappearing. Misrepresentations and mis- 
calculations are now evident. 

This class of American population — practical business 
people representing all classes and categories of the 
American trade and shipping, who look at things only 
from the money-making standpoint — is now visiting 
Europe for business, and no one can blame them. 

* 

# # 

The new American generation must needs be educated, 
to specialize in European business where special training 
is indispensable. 

European methods must be studied thoroughly if 
American Trade would accomplish what the European 
trade claims to have done, i.e., to have established a 
trading method with just and satisfactory results to buyer 
and seller, 

* 

* # 

It is a fact that with every transaction where one of 
the contracting parties takes advantage of the other, it 
ends in trouble for both, especially in foreign Trade. 

Two rights have to be respected, the one of the seller, 
and the other the buyer, and both rights are of equal 
importance. 

* 

* # 

European buyers must come to a complete under- 
standing with the American sellers. 

31 



This means confidence. 

To-day commercial mistrust is the dividing spirit. 
Buyer or seller is asking too much. 

It is just that European buyers should ask to be 
guaranteed for the proper handling of shipments, for 
deliveries, quality, packing, etc., when the American 
sellers are insisting upon cash payment or guaranteed 
payment. 

The American sellers are not to be blamed for not 
granting any long credits to European buyers regardless 
of their financial standing, but they are to be blamed, 
and the American banks also, for not accepting 
transactions properly guaranteed by European banks. 

# 

# _ # 

There is an unjustifiable mistrust on the part of the 
American banking institutions toward the prominent 
European banking institutions, which represent the 
standard trade and wealth of each nation. 

Many of these banks have been pioneers of the world's 

finances, and promoters of the universal wealth. 

* 

# * 

But if we study impartially the contribution of the 
European buyers to the American trade, we find that 
while thousands of them were robbed by a certain class 
of American traders, a very limited number of European 
buyers have taken advantage of the present exchange 
conditions, all their American business having been 
based upon cash terms. 

VII. 

France before the war was the most important world's 
financier next to England. 

While Germany was the distributor of its own manu- 
factured production, France was indirectly financing the 
foreign buyers of German goods. 
# 

# # 

Despite five years' war France is now developing her 
own industries and trade, and progressing slowly. 
France has supported two wars, one as terrible as the 

32 



other ; the one in the battlefields, the other at home. 
The French spirit with untiring efforts is struggling 
now to re-establish the devastated country. 

Despite " dry " America, which deprived France of 
one of the biggest outlets for her wines, and despite 
France's producing luxuries, now heavily taxed in 
many countries, and in others prohibited, the French 
people, left alone, struggle, confident of themselves. 

America can hardly find excuses for having abandoned 
France, which is the only contributor to-day to America's 

power and wealth. 

# 

# # 

In May I visited the devastated section north of 
France with my American friend, Mr. Isidor Geldtrunk. 

The villages were still as they were during the war — 
dugouts, trenches, and barbed wire, towns in ruins, 
without inhabitants, and large amounts of munitions 
spread about in the fields — a picture of desolation and 
misery which was most expressive, with numerous 
cemeteries situated near the roads and upon the hills. 
Everywhere the same picture. 

The only inhabitants a few children and very old 
persons. 

Everywhere ruined towns and villages, 

* 

# # 

Three months later I again visited the same places 
accompanied by another American friend, Mr. Terhune, 
It was the eve of All Saints' Day. 

Many towns have regained their pre-war life. Fields 
are cleaned up. 

People are working everywhere and there is life in 
every village and every town. 

In a large cemetery we noticed French girls placing 
flowers even on German graves. 

* 

# # 

Belgian post-war efforts were crowned with real 
success. First, owing to her geographical situation, 
and to the comparatively good condition in which the 
Germans left her, believing in their power of annexation. 

33 



Belgian people started trading with the Scandinavian 
countries and Holland, where the exchange is good, 
buying from Germany at ridiculous prices owing to the 
low German exchange. 

* 
# # 

I travelled in Belgium with an official agent, who was 
on a visit to special German districts, where stolen 
machinery and material had been accumulated by the 
Germans. I learned that his mission was most success- 
ful, as the German civil population is so disgusted with 
the German war policy that they betray the whereabouts 
of any stolen foreign property. 



VIII. 

As pre-war European foreign business was so self- 
contained, and as Germany and England were the two 
chief exporting countries for manufactured goods, a 
business man engaged in foreign Trade in Europe was 
not considered educated from the commercial standpoint 
unless he had had a thorough practical training in the 
Trade conditions of England and Germany, as these 
countries held the keys of European Trade. 

France was quite a German Trade territory. 

Italy and the Near East were mere German com- 
mercial colonies, and English Trade depended on 
Germany for cheap quality goods, she herself holding 
the supremacy for high quality productions. 

German domestic Trade methods and foreign Trade 
organisations set the standard for European Trade, and 
Germany accomplished commercially during the past 
few decades more than the rest of Europe in a century. 

Commercial education in Germany was first of all 
practical and then theoretical. 

# 

# # 

While a business man in America limits his education 
to that required for a practical business career, a German 
business man does not neglect his literary education, 

34 



and it is to this spirit which aims at perfection, that we 
owe to the Germans so many creations in system and 
methods modified and adapted by American Trade. 

* 

# * 

American Trade failed completely in its attempt to 
control European Trade by its Trust monopoly methods. 
On the other hand German Trade captured the world's 
markets by its skill and patience in adopting its methods 
to the individual requirements of each nation, and by 
studying the commercial psychology of its customers, 
and by avoiding the fatal mistake of trying to 
standardize its business system for all nations. 

# # 

Take for example German Trade in the Near East, 
and especially in Greece, where I followed its develop- 
ment for several years. 

I held a position in the National Bank of Greece ; 
the governor of which, at that time, was Mr. Stefan Streit, 
a gentleman of Bavarian origin. 

Under his skilled direction the bank took its place 
amongst the best in Europe. 

He contributed to the foundation of the Orient Bank 
and the Bank of Creta, and was the pioneer of the 
modern banking system in Greece. 

* 

# # 

German Trade was protected and promoted during 
the past fifty years in the Near East by means of the 
German Consular Service, and as a result, while 
commission houses representing other nationalities 
found it impossible to make any headway, German houses 
accumulated fortunes. The Germans always trusted 
their representation to their own countrymen, never to 
strangers. 

The Germans have shown themselves to be hard 
workers and most reliable. 

Their commercial education was excellent and their 
reputation of the highest. 

German Trade was quite at home in the Near East, 
and was worked under a clever system, combining 
banking and merchandizing. 

35 



They created a system of spot deposits, and by this 
means cleaned out other foreign commission houses 
trying to do business for future deliveries. 

The German manufacturers' agents and Consular 
Trade advisers knew each merchant in every town, knew 
his business, his moral and financial standing, and his 
business activities from the starting of his commercial 
career. 

A travellers' service with exhibitions and samples 
completed the agents' work. 

German manufacturers remembered their customers 
once or twice yearly sending them some insignificant 
present which appealed to the Oriental mind, and 
suggested a certain solicitude which was appreciated. 

American Trade lost its splendid opportunities through 
want of educated and experienced representatives. 



American foreign Trade, for unknown reasons, confined 
itself to France principally, with headquarters in Paris, 
Paris being in the American imagination (if such exists) 
an ideal capital, and every American business man on 
his European business mission felt bound to make a 
stay in Paris. 

I met hundreds of American business men in Paris, 
most of them leading luxurious lives, and doing so 
cheaply, owing to the Exchange. 

Almost everyone of them was tired out, physically 
and morally. 

Their sound mentalities and happy dispositions were 
contaminated in an atmosphere of physical and moral 
degradation. 

Women and wine, cabarets, cates and restaurants, 
good eating and drinking — these were their business 
impressions. 

Almost every American business man leaving the 
States does so under the impression that the outside 
business world is Paris. 

Rich new countries which are lacking in industries, 
and obliged to import everything owing to their extreme 

36 



want, offer vast important fields for sound and permanent 
business. 

Because such countries are lacking in some of the 
comforts of life American business men prefer to miss 
business opportunity rather than sacrifice their personal 
comforts. 

* 
* # 

The German Trade pioneer of the past penetrated to 
the most distant towns in the Near East, where security 
of person was, to say the least, problematic, 
where communications were difficult, where hotels 
or restaurants were unknown, and the traveller obliged 
to share a peasant's bed, or very often to sleep on the 
floor. 

Consider also the number of French contractors who 
sacrifice the best years of their lives in some small 
Oriental town or village, employing their own capital, 
material and personnel in the execution of their contracts. 



IX. 

My Business Trip around Europe 
after the Armistice. 

Before leaving for Europe we closed several important 
contracts for foodstuffs, shoes, and other commodities 
to the value of several million dollars, and in addition all 
our left over goods warehoused during the war were 
shipped for Europe. 

We supplied ourselves with an excellent collection 
of samples of American goods and products. 

I obtained the direct representation of some important 
American concerns such as McElwan, Morse & Rogers, 
Ferguson Iron & Steel Co., Interstate Iron & Steel 
Co., etc. 

I had already under way large shipments of codfish, 
consigned to Greece and purchased from Jobb Brothers 
and the Seaboard Trading Co. 

37 



A shipment of glucose from the Morningstar Co., 
and ninety thousand cases of condensed milk purchased 
direct from the condensing companies. 

I had, in addition, a thousand tons of sugar, contracted 
for with the Federal Sugar Refining Co. 

It was still the glorious period when the dollar was 
worth (5 francs 40 centimes) 5 francs 40. 



American banking formalities and want of efficiency 
in handling foreign business, both in American banking 
and Trade circles, are responsible for the false opinion 
American exporters have about European business. 

American Trade and bankers attempted to force the 

European buyers to accept American domestic Trade 

terms, and if they had some success in this way during 

the war, they failed after the Armistice. 

# 
# # 

Who could imagine that an American bank would 
refuse to surrender documents to a buyer of such 
importance as the Municipality of Paris in the case of a 
transaction for thirty-four thousand cases of milk. 

Who could believe that an American bank would 
refuse to accept as guarantee shares of the Comptoir 
National d'Escompte? 

Who could believe that a shipment of mine worth 
six hundred thousand dollars arrived at its destination, 
while the shipping documents were still in the bank's 
safe in New York ? 



I met large numbers of American business men and 
travelling salesmen, who had made a tour of Germany, 
Austria, Belgium, France, England, Italy and the Near 
East, and all of them were returning discouraged. 

No dusiness at all. 

The contrary is the fact. 

There is plenty of normal business, real Trade, but 
not the business in which to make a fortune by one 
transaction. 



The business requires patience and hard work to 
cultivate ; it must be conducted with method and 
system, and will result in that sound permanent business 
which creates reputation, confidence and credit. 

I explored this nervous mentality of the American 
business man. 

I witnessed their vain efforts, their work without any 
of those basic principles which ensure success in foreign 
markets, their want of banking experience and financial 
initiative, and their lack of capacity in grasping foreign 
business opportunities. 

I remarked that all of them were imbued with the 
idea that Europe was saved by America, and as a 
consequence Europe was a bargain for them, and it was 
sufficient to be American in order to make the buyers 
surrender cheques and orders. 

A well-known American business man, whom I met 
in Cologne, said to me, Etirope will be our colony, with 
her colonies. 



My opinion is that very few American houses in 
France will be able to compete with the established 
business there. 

The same may be said of Italy, and perhaps England. 

The real opportunity for American Trade lies in the 
Near East, Balkanized Europe, and later Russia, 
through Germany. 

Berlin and Constantinople will be two very important 
commercial centres for American Trade. 

American foreign organizations, which for the most 
part sprang up during the war and established them- 
selves on the Continent, either as Societes Anonymes 
in France, or as Limited Companies in England, instead 
of controlling European businesses, were themselves 
controlled thereby. 

They made heavy losses and were obliged to confine 
themselves to European domestic Trade, and to accept 
the terms and conditions of that Trade, and were it not 
that their investment in dollars under favourable 

39 



exchange helped they would have been forced to clear 
out. 



France is a country for luxuries only, and France will 
be obliged, maybe, to trade exclusively with England, 
and to-morrow with Germany. 

The Exchange position ruined American foreign 
Trade, obliging European nations to limit their purchases 
to absolute necessaries, and so give time to home pro- 
duction to fill all requirements, and cut off American 
Trade entirely. 



What America was exporting during the war cannot 
be taken into consideration to-day. 

Many foreign products were imported to America and 
re-exported to Europe. 

These products are imported by Europe to-day direct 
from the producing countries. 

These re-exports increased the fantastic volume of 
the export figures during the war, but to-day they are 
gone for ever. 

If we make a thorough study of American production 
in manufactured goods and raw material we find that the 
absolute amount for permanent business is very 
restricted in comparison with the war-time figures, which 
upset the calculations of many business men. 

When Germany re-starts production on a serious 
scale, and when the other European nations resume 
their normal production, and with Russia's aid, Europe 
will have very little need for American goods. 

Certain American productions are very superior to 
European ones of the same class, especially up-to-date 
machinery and structural material. 

In these respects America is years ahead of Europe. 

But even here pioneering work is necessary to 
establish sound permanent business. 

The superiority mentioned must be insistently pointed 
out. 

40 



This requires both method and patience, and the 
business must be based on the principles which developed 
American domestic Trade. 



X. 

I was personally connected with different shipbuilding 
propositions, especially for Greece. 

Greek commercial tonnage was sold at enormous 
prices during the war. 

Greek capital lies idle in Greek banks and abroad 
— capital intended for shipbuilding, and the Greek 
Government insists that the shipowners either replace 
their missing tonnage or submit to a heavy tax on 
their idle capital. 

I obtained permission from the Emergency Fleet 
Corporation to dispose of a certain number of the United 
States Shipping Board wooden vessels, which permission 
also carried with it the right to obtain from them a 
certain number of steel freighters. 

A few days subsequently the permission with regard to 
the steel freighters was withdrawn, and as a consequence 
the wooden vessels were unsaleable. 

Almost every project worked out in an intelligent and 
businesslike way was suppressed. 

# 

* # 

The United States Government unconsciously gave 
the opportunity to British shipyards to procure the 
largest amount of foreign business, and obliged a certain 
number of American shipbuilders to go out of business. 
Millions of dollars were lost on account of the United 
States shipping and shipbuilding programme. 

To-day the favourable English Exchange, coupled 
with a traditional reputation, enabled English shipyards 
to compete advantageously in price with America, and 
to secure a large proportion of foreign business. 

American shipbuilding on the other hand, with an 
indifferent reputation and an unfavourable exchange, is 

4i 



handicapped by the location of its shipyards, which are 
largely situated on the lakes, where in winter time the 
waters are frozen over, making deliveries impossible. 

# 

# # 

I had a splendid proposition from the officials of a 
well-known European concern, supported by a foreign 
government, to establish shipyards on the Mediterranean 
waters, where there are large possibilities, not only for 
the present, but also for the future. 

So substantial was the support, and so excellent the 
guarantees, that no one would believe that the proposi- 
tion would be refused by American Shipbuilders and 
Bankers. 

In addition to this the same was prepared to give an 
order for three large freighters. 

"Only in dollars and cash" was the reply from 
America. 

# * # 

I had millions of dollars' worth of foodstuffs, shipments, 
cash transactions, payable against shipping documents 
for which the American suppliers furnished inferior 
qualities, or failed entirely to ship. 

They took advantage of the increase of price, but 
failed to respect their agreements. 

In every American Chamber of Commerce abroad, 
complaints by hundreds have been lodged for non- 
delivery, or delayed deliveries, or delivery of inferior 
qualities. 

To-day we are face to face with the cruel reality that 
whereas everything which was American in pre-war 
days was considered just and upright, to-day everything 
American is entirely discredited, and it is up to 
American Trade organizations in connection with 
American Banking Institutions to wipe out this stain 
from the name of American Commerce and Banking. 

# 

# # 

American Trade emissaries do not realize that Europe 
is not a place where a Trust Trade system can be 
accepted and worked out successfully as in America. 

42 



They should remember and ponder over the mis- 
fortunes and losses of the first American pioneers to 
Europe, with their huge Trust plans, such, for example, 
as the Underground London Railway, and the London 
Opera House, where millions were lost, and the enter- 
prises eventuallysold to English Companies for a fraction 
of their cost. 

Regardless of business nerve the European, by 
atavism, is mistrustful and narrow-minded. 

Propositions such as the formation of huge Trade 
organizations, supported by American Banks for the 
purpose of controlling European Trade are not serious 
propositions. 

Americans must make a closer study of the question 

of competition. 

* 
# # 

The American financiers and bankers are too 
indifferent or incapable of taking any initiative, witness- 
ing sarcastically the chaotic conditions of the exchange, 
and taking advantage of the victims' money. 

American banks have established their branches on 
the Continent, the principal aim of which is supposed 
to be a close co-operation with European banks in 
order to re-create and develop the trade of their debtor 
victims in their own interest. 

American banks are refusing to-day the guarantee 
of the best European banks, European securities, bonds, 
etc. 

Instead of assisting they are increasing mistrust, 
undermining confidence and refusing commercial credit 
which is the basis of the prosperity of international Trade. 
* 

Let us take the shoe industry in America, the pro- 
ductions of which were introduced into Europe before 
the war, and for which the war afforded an opportunity, 
as Europeans had began to appreciate the style and 
quality of American shoes. 

I was the representative of the well-known shoe 
firm, McElwan, Morse and Rogers, and in addition I had 

43 



contracted for one hundred and seventy-five thousand 
pairs of shoes. 

The state of the European Exchange was quite pro- 
hibitive for cash transactions, and furthermore, England, 
Spain, France, Switzerland, Greece, and Italy, had 
begun to produce. 

Competition in several qualities is very keen. 

In Europe people's taste for styles is exaggerated — 
there is no uniformity in the lasts as there is in America. 

European production is in the hands of manufacturers 
with limited productive capacity. 

They have to satisfy the prejudices of so many classes 
of society that this gives rise to a multiplicity of styles. 

American shoe manufacturers during the war were 

deaf to suggestions with regard to a change in their 

lasts, and imposed their will in this respect on the 

Europeans. 

# 

* # 

England enjoys the most important position on the 
Continent in the matter of shoe productions. 

The English Trade contracted for the supply of huge 
quantities of leather in the United States, before and 
immediately following the Armistice, at very low prices. 
The liquidation of war stores started with a low 
European exchange and credit, against the high 
American exchange and cash. 

A well known English concern, Jones Bros., of 
London, bought the Australian Government's shoe 
stocks, very fine strong shoes, and sold them direct to 
the civil population at an extremely low price. 

# * 

I closed a transaction with the Roumanian Govern- 
ment for one hundred thousand pairs of shoes at a price 
which showed a good profit per pair, payment being 
guaranteed in dollars by the Roumanian Government, 
with Roumanian Treasury Bonds payable within two 
years at six per cent, in advance. 

After this first transaction the Government was willing 
to close another for six hundred thousand pairs of shoes. 

44 



The American banks and manufacturers refused this 
proposition, and the Canadians accepted the deal, 

I closed a similar transaction with the Greek Govern- 
ment for a like quantity. 

As the shoe market and the freight conditions were 
chaotic I was obliged to quote a price leaving a good 
margin, as an advance of one or more dollars a pair 
had occurred during the previous few months. 

Mr. Daniel Morse refused to accept this deal because 
of the high price quoted and accepted. 

It showed a profit of one dollar per pair, and was a 

cash transaction. 

# 
* # 

Mr. Morse was actuated by an ethical business 
principle in this matter, and such principles, if more 
widely practised by American exporters, would soon 
bring sound and permanent foreign business. 

I had a somewhat similar experience with my 
German shoe contracts. 

Here some first-class German banks were ready to 
guarantee payment in dollars within six months, which 
was the necessary time for the shipment. 

One contract was for thirty thousand pairs and the 
other for two hundred thousand pairs. 

Both these contracts were refused by American banks 
and manufacturers. 



Europe offers an unlimited field for a certain class of 
American goods. 

American manufacturers must organize their European 
business properly, and educate the European buyers as 
they do their domestic buyers, by scientific advertising. 

In every European market at the moment American 
shoe manufacturers and others are represented either by 
small foreign agents having many other representations, 
or by general commission houses. 

This is a primitive way of doing foreign business, and 
while business is transacted in this manner it will always 
be poor and uncertain. 

45 



In pre-war days American shoes were introduced into 
the Continent as high-class luxury shoes. 

This is the exact opposite of what should have been 
done, as the huge American production of ordinary 
shoes makes a wider appeal to larger classes, especially 
in view of the uniformity of make. 

In the Near East, where American shoes are well 
adapted to the climate, and where Exchange conditions 
are favourable, the American shoe manufacturer has an 
opportunity now to control the market. 



XI. 
War Speculation. 

During the war capital was congested in the war 
industries. Since the Armistice it has begun to flow in 
its normal course according to the domestic conditions 
of each nation either in creating new industries or in 
expanding established ones. 

The money spent during the war and for the war 
did not emigrate to another planet ; it will be again forced 
into circulation by means of political or other events, and 
so America's accumulated gold deposits will regain what 
is considered as normal circulation. 

Regardless whether the movement is of an internal or 

external nature the eternal law of return will not 

permit that the most precious conventional metal, 

regarded as the standard of international monetary 

exchange, should remain accumulated in one point, 

namely, America, while Europe is obliged to use the 

lowest monetary value, or rather non-value, paper money. 
* 

# # 

The new capitalist class has not yet adopted the pre- 
war principles of trading as they themselves made good 
during the period when speculation was the guiding 
principle, and money making through inflated profits was 
a matter of comparative ease. 



This speculative spirit is everywhere in evidence. 
These new capitalists, regardless of their nationality, are 
not satisfied with reasonable profits ; profiteering and 
speculating are their methods, but in time they will learn 
from experience that they must either trade honestly 
and commercially, or keep their capital idle. 

Government control as regards profiteering was a 
necessary evil, but we have seen the Government itself 
contaminated and adopting the very system it set out 
to suppress ! 



XII. 

Armour and Co. is perhaps the only American house 
which has transacted large business in Germany, and 
official business since the Armistice. 

They have offices in Hamburg, Cologne, and other 
German towns. 

Armour & Co. are highly thought of in Germany and 
their reputation is of the best. 

A friend informed me that Armour himself was well- 
acquainted with the ex- Kaiser's private affairs and was 
numbered among the Kaiser's intimate friends. 

He was one of the few foreigners who regarded the 
Kaiser as a human personality. 

He, unlike most snobs of whom the Kaiser was 
sick, never asked for titles, or favours of any kind. 

Armour's confidence in Germany has proved of real 
service to himself and to American Trade. 



XIII. 

A remark made to me by a German-American with 
whom 1 travelled from Cologne to Frankfort, seems 
worthy of note. 

" The Americans in their pleasure trips before the war 
knew the artistic and sentimental Latin races and were 
very fond of them, and the Latin nations on their side 

47 



knew the Americans as liberal money-spenders and 
generous customers, but not in the garb of a cool money- 
making business people." 

The war brought these peoples closer together and 
enabled them to know one another more intimately. 
The result was a mutual disgust and quiet separation. 

France was the Trade centre and offered the best 
business opportunities during the war. 



Germans understand Americans well. 

The business mentality of the two peoples is very 
similar. 

Both are cool and shrewd in their deals, the motto 
that "business is business," appeals equally to them. 

For this reason the German commercial element in 
America has shown such great development, and 
Germany is the only nation represented in America by 
millions of merchants and business men, while the other 
nations are represented mostly by emigrant elements. 

The Americans, however, are lacking in the patience 
and industrious habits of the Germans. 

They regard money as a medium for life, and they 
spend freely and take life easily. 

The cool American, who does not know what imagin- 
ation or inspiration means, came in contact with the 
sentimental, refined and tricky mentality of the Latin 
race, and his experience led him to the conclusion that 
he had to deal with a race devoid of business ability. 
On the other hand the Latins now consider the American 
business man as a thief, as a wild and brutal autocrat. 
Europeans misunderstood American smartness, spiced 
at times with honest bluff. 

Had the Americans had the Germans to deal with, 
they would have been at home with them in no time and 
misunderstanding would have been impossible. 

I met American soldiers everywhere on the Continent, 
trying to do some business before returning home ; their 
efforts were directed to transactions which offered quick 
profits. 

48 



While German, English, and even French soldiers 
were struggling with all their might to make connections 
and to establish something permanent. 

Many English officers have also established them- 
selves in business and are doing well. 

XIV. 
Around Europe. 

It is strange that in Belgium to-day the general feeling 
is not against Germany, it is rather pro- German. 

The Belgian people started trading immediately on the 
Armistice, regardless of war impressions. 

Belgian Trade was mostly interested in German Trade. 

The same may be said of Italy, which started imme- 
diately trading with Germany, and may be Italy was 
doing some business with Germany during the war, 
through Switzerland. 

In Italy, as in Spain to-day, the prevailing feeling is 
against America, and this feeling is growing daily owing 
to the pro- Bolshevist propaganda. 

Italy and Spain are both anarchistic centres. 

The Spanish and Italian people are very prone to 
follow the Bolshevist movement as the poor classes, 
compared with other countries, are disproportionately 
larger than the rich. 

# # 

German influence in Italy was very important before 
the war, and if Austria had not been the ally of 
Germany it is certain that Italy would never have 
abandoned Germany. 

German trade before the war was very important in 
Italy, and especially in the north of Italy. 

To-day Italian interests are closely connected with the 
German as a result of so many years' inter-trading. 

Italy was not hurt very much by the war. Her 
pretensions are disproportionately larger than her 
sacrifices. 

49 



Italy's traditional policy is "bargaining." In Spain 
the same thing obtains as in America; a certain class of 
traders have accumulated large fortunes. 

The anarchistic movement in Spain is very accen- 
tuated. 



Switzerland is the happiest country. 

To-day her pro-German feelings are not disguised as 
during the war. Switzerland is the money-making 
intermediary arbitrator for international misunder- 
standings. 

The general feeling in Switzerland to-day is against 
America. 



In Scandinavia, Holland and Denmark, things are the 
same as in Switzerland. 

These countries were helping Germany during the 
war. 

It is useless to dwell on the traditional pro-German 
tendencies in these countries. They are happy in the 
fact that the war created for them unlimited opportunities 
for the present and future. 

Their exchange allows them to trade with America, 
and their unlimited confidence to trade with Germany. 

The feelings against America there are the same as 
in the rest of Europe. 

* ' # 

Roumania, which is one of the richest countries in the 
world, and which offered to the American Trade the 
biggest opportunities for large and permanent business, 
received no better treatment from America than the 
others. 

The American Trade did not take into consideration 
the real wealth and unlimited resources of Roumania, 
and her importance owing to her privileged geographical 
situation. 

In Roumania the pro-German feelings are very pro- 
nounced ; they are against America. 

5° 



A large part of Europe now is Balkanized. 

Many problems are still pending. 

Turkey is ready to join the successful Bolshevists and 
do anything they can in order to re-create international 
troubles. 

Herein lies their only opportunity to save Con- 
stantinople. 

Serbia is entirely dissatisfied. 

Greece is dissatisfied and divided. Roumania is dis- 
satisfied, and Bulgaria is waiting for an opportunity. 



Bohemia and Hungary, which were detached from 
Austria, and which were serving Austria as a source of 
wealth, are ameliorating their situation gradually and 
firmly. 

Their trade was organized before the war inde- 
pendently, while Austria was representing aristocratic 
prestige. 

To-day the aristocratic classes are starving in Austria. 
This is the end of the once powerful dualistic dynasty. 
Austria has to start an entirely new national life. 



From the newly-created nations we have to expect 
trouble, new national ambitions and ideals, new wars. 
The new-born nations are to-day like children left 
without food and assistance. 

They must struggle, and struggle strenuously, but as 

long as Germany, Austria, and Russia are as they are 

now, no one can expect these new nations to establish 

their own finances, their Trade, their wealth, their 

independence. 

# 
# # 

The traditional trade relations between all the 
European countries cannot be altered by war, which is 
merely a periodical evil. 

This war was but a trade war for commercial 
supremacy between Germany and England. 



XV. 

Feeling against America in France is very strong. 
A transaction in which I was interested will illustrate 
the extent of this feeling, 

I shipped about ninety thousand cases of condensed 
milk to France. The Custom House Public Health 
Service called upon me to explain why some of the tins 
containing the milk had lead soldering on the interior 
— a thing which obviously had occurred through 
inadvertence in the manufacture. 

On my offering a reasoned explanation, the official 
said " You Americans, after having taken away our 
money are now trying to poison us." 

About five thousand cases were confiscated, but later 
on released. 



XVI. 

I met a French ex-soldier in Hungary, who succeeded 
with very little money in establishing himself in business. 
While serving, he became acquainted with the proprietor 
of a silk concern in a small Hungarian town, and 
arranged to do some business for him. 

On demobilization he bought with his economies a 
small amount of silk and started trading. 

After a few trips his capital increased, and now his 
business is flourishing, and he can boast of a capital 
of a few hundred thousand francs. 

Business of this safe and limited character is being 
handled by many others like him, with success. 

An ex- French militaire introduced me to a German 
buyer in Berlin, who closed transactions for thirty 
thousand pairs of shoes, and within a few hours de- 
posited the money with the Weiner Levy Bank in Berlin. 

Quick business deals of this kind are difficult to find 
in other Continental markets. 

52 



XVII. 

Europe a Poorhouse to be Let or Sold. 

Payment accepted in dollars only ! 

But the dollar despots do not reflect on their bargain. 
Europe is cleaned out. 

There remain but the remnants of artistic glories with 
historical shadows under which preparations are being 
made for the re-incarnation of new Kaisers and gloomy 
Lenins, Trotskys, Bella Kuhns, and Liebknechts. 

The bargain is a dangerous one. 

The Americans are the modern Laocoons with Troy's 
wooden horse. 

The wooden horse to-day is Europe. 

No more help for the poorhouse ! 



With a dollar daily a person can exist in France, be 
happy in Germany, and be considered extravagant in 
Austria. 

In Berlin I engaged a motor car for half-a-day for one 
hundred marks, which are now equivalent to a dollar 
and a half. 



Princes and kings are at present a drug in the market. 

The purchase of titled European aristocrats, 
descendants of a puerile aristocracy, will create a new 
sort of white man slave traffic. 

These rejetons of an ancient patriarchal time, branded 
socially and self-standardised "aristocrats," are to-day 
hopeless and discredited. 

The women were their sole income during their 
glorious period. 

They were "hooked " at courts or high administrations 
as flatterers and parasites, or were entretenus of rich 
aristocratic women. 

To-day, having lost their protectors, they are at the 
mercy of the people's revanche. 

53 



XVIII. 

England after five years' strenuous war succeeded 
in stopping American Trade invasion. 

Anglo-American relations are, at the present moment, 
by no means happy. 

The peoples of both countries are rapidly drifting 
towards a position of misunderstanding and estrange- 
ment. 

Anti- British propaganda in the United States 
flourishes apace. 

The rejection of the Covenant of the League of 
Nations by America leaves British opinion astonished 
and perplexed. 

It is obvious that England cannot carry by itself all 
the burdens of the late colossal war, and it is equally 
obvious that America has a very grave duty to fulfil 
towards Europe. 

It will be interesting to see how England stands to- 
day in view of what has been already said. 

# * # 

Exchange falls with deadly monotony against Europe, 
and England's purchasing power is thereby greatly 
restricted. 

England needs American commodities, especially raw 
materials, but the exchange is prohibitive. 

The position is all the more exasperating, from the 
English view point, in that her entire indebtedness to 
America has been incurred on behalf of her Allies, who 
were equally America's Allies. 

The present financial position is positively fatal in its 
effects on Europe, and millions of Europeans must, as a 
consequence, suffer and perish. 

America alone can ameliorate the position, and both 
honour and self-interest call on her to come to the rescue 
of a bleeding Europe, in whose interest she intervened, 
and by whose success against Germany she secured for 
herself immunity from a threatened invasion of her 
shores. 

54 



England, conscious of her latent powers, fights on in 
her economic strife, and there can be no doubt she will 
win through. 

One hears of industrial developments on all sides, and 
a glance at the current Stock Exchange publications 
reveals a subscription for industrial undertakings for the 
year 19 19 of the sum of one hundred and eighty- 
million pounds, against forty million pounds in the 
preceding year. 

The position of imports and exports is no less re- 
markable, and the monthly returns justify the greatest 
optimism. 

No doubt the import position is such as to cause some 
anxiety, and the balance of trade against England has 
reached a dangerous figure, but it may be explained 
that this grave position was, in a great measure, due 
to the necessity of replenishing exhausted stocks of food 
and raw materials. 

On the other hand the export Trade rapidly gained 
strength, and while the value of exports in December, 
19 1 8, was thirty-eight millions, that of November, 191 9, 
reached a total of over eighty-seven millions. 

And further it may be noted that the re-export of 
goods has risen from thirty-one millions to one hundred 
and forty-one millions in the twelve months following 
December, 19 18. 

This is indeed a hopeful outlook for English commerce. 



In the shipbuilding industry the position is also very 
remarkable. England staked her most precious asset 
her mercantile marine, in order to keep the Allies in 
the war. 

Her losses in shipping were colossal, yet to-day, 
strange as it may seem, British shipyards have recovered 
their supremacy as measured by the tonnage of merchant 
ships under construction. 

British shipbuilding is now higher than before the war. 

Lloyds' register of shipbuilding returns shows that at 
December 31st, 1919, the United Kingdom had under 

55 



construction 2,994,249 gross tons, whereas the com- 
parative United States figure was 2,966,515 tons. 

It was very widely believed that British shipbuilding 
capacity had shrunk during the war, but the actual facts 
by no means justify this belief. 

It is now possible to show that British building 
and repairing yards were employing more labour at the 
end of the war than at the beginning, in spite of the 
calls of the army and munitions. 

Perhaps enough has been said to prove the wonderful 
vitality of British commerce after a war of such an 
exhausting character. 



England finds herself to-day, from an economic and 
financial standpoint, the dominant power in Europe. 
Her factories are glutted with orders. 

Her exchange position will gradually work back to 
pre-war levels. 

Her hold on European Trade, especially with Germany 
and Russia, will in time become a practical monopoly, 
chiefly owing to America's exchange policy. 

Europe will know that the United States, in spite of 
incomparable wealth and resources, declined to help to 
pick up the pieces of a European order of things which 
she helped to smash. 

America's abstention has also grave political con- 
sequences. 

# 
# # 

At every point of the map a real settlement is retarded. 
As regards Constantinople and what was the Turkish 
Empire, the results are a growing menace throughout 
the whole East. 

The repercussion is felt in India and Egypt. 

Agitation runs through the Arab race. 

Every little Balkan nation is prejudiced ; Greece 
most of all. 

Every element of general danger inherent in the 
Russian situation is infinitely aggravated. 



Britain and her Allies in Europe must proceed by 
themselves to settle the future of the former Turkish 
Empire, and the vexed question of the control of 
Constantinople. 

Austria was put in a position where, by no human 
possibility could she save herself, and that is why 
Britain, as well as she can, must act if America will not. 



America must take heed of European sentiment if she 
does not wish to find her Trade in Europe a total failure. 
Britain is so well equipped for the commercial fray, her 
position is geographically so favourable, and Europe's 
indebtedness to her is so huge, that America cannot 
afford the handicap of a reputation for cynical indifference 
if she would win in the approaching Trade war. 

England holds the cards, and given a favourable 
labour position she can be trusted to play them well. 

The influential and powerful position of the British 
Trade Unions, and the more than probable event that 
Labour may be called on to form a Government in 
the near future, are factors which make for the content- 
ment and stability of Labour, and consequently ensure a 
steady recovery in Trade conditions. 

The English Labour Party insists on a settlement 
with Russia, and the probability is that Labour will win. 
English labour, intelligent and well led, sees clearly 
enough that Russia possesses vast stores of corn and 
raw materials, and refuses to accept the platitudes of 
imperialistic politicians, who would plunge Europe anew 
into the horrors of war. 

In this connection the views of Britain's leading 
Labour organ are of interest. 

" The War Minister must be told that if he attempts 
to drive us to war, we shall refuse to go. That not a 
man nor a gun shall be moved, not a shell made, not 
a shilling contributed. That if he, his militarist friends, 
and the financiers who are behind them, wish to fight 
the Soviet Republic, they may go and do so. But that 

57 



the British people will have no lot and no part in their 
mad enterprises." 

It is clear from all this that British Labour means 
business in every sense of the word, and it may be 
accepted as a certainty that Britain will rise to the 
opportunity offered her by the raising of the Russian 
blockade, and by America's short-sighted policy in her 
dealings with her quondam Allies. 

XIX. 
From Gerard to Hoover. 

It is a misfortune that starving people are condemned 
to be judged by the over-fed and the poor by the rich, 
and to-day poor and starved Europe to be judged by the 
Golden and overfed America. 

The American people are now convinced that the 
European nations are wrong, and that they do not 
understand moral principles. 

But European nations to-day are not wrong. 

They are right. 

If the Europeans do not understand the American 
mentality, the Americans are far from understanding 
that of the Europeans. 

But does the American Government to-day understand 
its own policy ? 

The same process which the American Government 
suggested in order to wake up the German people's 
conscience must to-day be employed in order to wake up 
the American public, in whose eyes, at the moment, 
Europe is unjustly discredited. 

Would the Americans permit a foreign statesman to 
enter their sacred traditional doors of independence, and 
impose, like another Moses, a decalogue of moral 
principles and political reforms ? 

The American senate's voice was, is, and will remain 
in the political history of the United States as the voice 

58 



of common sense, the voice of pure and healthy judg- 
ment, the voice of reason, the real sound American voice. 

" Entangling alliances and partnerships embroil us in 
all European conflicts, utilizing our young men in 
policing territories and fighting the racial dynastic battles 
of the old world." 

How clear and pure this wording, and how emphatic 
and rich the expression of it, representing the opinion 
of all real American thought leaders, 

If a nation claims to be humanitarian and preaches 
the altruistic moral, she has no need to mix herself in 
the private national affairs of foreign nations, trying to 
force, to impose, to dictate. 

When the President was pronouncing his fourteen 
points he never anticipated the sort of a reality he had 
to face. 

Nations represent different mentalities, different ideals, 
different principles and religions, and are composed of 
these varied individualities which are the characteristic 
privilege of mankind. 

Nations are not standardized with protocols, and new 
morals are not imposed by force. 

The President's moral and altruistic policy, despite its 
abnegation, proved to be a real negation of his doctrine. 

His politics have created this international chaos 
which is now called Peace, 

Now the President is no longer a persona grata to 
Europe, which feels that he is responsible for its ruin. 

# 

# # 

Many of the official American emissaries are not 
educated sufficiently to judge of foreign conditions. 
Many of them do not speak foreign languages, and their 
education being purely American is much too narrow. 
Their training in the domestic American affairs is 
altogether different from that of the European ; they 
consider foreign conditions from their own point of view, 
which leads to misjudgments and false conclusions, 
which are amongst the causes which have created 
present international complications. 

59 



I am taking a few citations from Gerard's book (" My 
Four Years in Germany."). 

Gerard was an American diplomat, and during four 
years American Ambassador in Germany. 

His book was largely advertised during the war, and 
now he himself is a presidential candidate. 

The book is written in plain American language. 

" I want to bring home to our people the gravity of 
the situation, because I want to tell them that the 
military and naval power of the German Empire is not 
broken" 

"How should anyone believe that Germany will 
break under starvation and make peace because of 
revolution!' 

"The German nation is not one which makes 
revolution. There will be scattered riots in Germany, 
but no simultaneous rising of the whole people " 

" A revolution of the army is impossible, and at home 
there are only the boys and old men, easily kept in 
subjection by the police." 

" There is far greater danger of the starvation of our 
Allies than of the starvation of the Germans." 

" Certainly the people suffer, but still more certainly 
this war will not be ended because of the starvation of 
Germany." 

" nevertheless, owing to the clever financial 

handling of the country by the Government and the 
great banks there is at present no financial distress in 
Germany." 

# 

# # 

The statements of this American diplomat proved 
absolutely false. 

While Germany's naval power was unbroken, and her 
military cadre powerful, starvation, revolution, both in 
army and at home, broke down Germany, and the 
imaginary danger as described by Gerard " the U-boat 
peril," turned out to be no real one for England. 

" Russia may either break up into civil wars or 
become so ineffective that the millions of German troops 

60 



engaged in the Russian front may be withdrawn and 
hurled against the western lines." 

And we know as a fact that Russia's downfall over- 
whelmed Germany in the revolutionary cyclone. 

We know also officially to-day that Germany was 
lost long ago, and the beginning of its end was the fatal 
battle of the Marne. 

* # 

These extracts from Gerard's book prove that the 
American mentality is not yet ripe to digest and 
understand the foreign conditions. 

According to the writer's judgment America's fear of 
being the next victim of German aggression, was the 
real motive of her entry into the War. 
* 

America to-day needs to start her international 
political education and her diplomatic training while the 

Old World is struggling hard to get rid of it 

I let Gerard speak (from his book " My Four Years in 
Germany.") 

"It is characteristic of our deep ignorance of all 

foreign affairs I am afraid that after this war, if we 

expect to keep a place for our trade in the world we 
may have to revise some of our ideas as to the so-called 
Trusts and the Sherman laws. , 

" Much of the commercial success of Germany during 
the last forty years is due to the fact that each manu- 
facturer, each discoverer in Germany, each exporter, knew 
that the whole weight and power of the Government 
was behind him in his efforts to increase his business. 
On the other hand, in America, business men have been 
terrorized, almost to inaction, by constant persecutions. 
What was a crime in one part of the States under one 
Circuit Court of Appeal, was a perfectly legitimate act 
in another. 

" If we have to meet the intense competition of 
Germany after the war we have got to view all these 
problems from new angles. 

" I wish that the propaganda had been earlier and 
more successful, because it is by travel that people 
61 



learn to know each other, and consequently abstain from 
war." 



Gerard's book was published during the war, con- 
sequently within two years things are not materially 
changed. 



The Presidential elections in the United States will 
complicate the European situation. 

The political struggle will be stubborn. 

The European situation with the Peace Treaty and 
the League of Nations have already started to figure in 
the political programmes of the Presidential candidates 
as a subject of personal advertising. 

The entire nation will become absorbed once again in 
internal political struggles, upon the outcome of which 
Europe is placing her hopes. 

In the last elections the war was the most attractive 

election cry, and the democrats won the Presidency. 

# 
* * 

Coming to Hoover's dogmatic statements, " get 
back to work instead of relying upon America to help ; " 
" there is no need for hysteria." 

This advice is part of a good demagogic game for the 
next Presidential election, where Mr. Hoover's friends 
are preparing to boom his candidature for Presidency. 

The American war taxes have nothing to do with the 
commercial credits which will contribute largely to their 
reduction. 

Mr. Hoover is planning within a vicious circle, his 
proposition to give time in collecting European interest 
charges, is only a temporary help, it is a sort of charity 
to the debtor. 

* 

European Trade to-day does not need any charity. 
It needs to re-create its pre-war wealth, to re-establish 
its pre-war credit, and pay as it paid, and as it is paying 
now. 

62 



How can the European nations go back to work with 
a dollar as it is now ? 

America is stopping the reconstruction period. 

If France and England possess more collateral 
assets, they need them for their own trade, after having 
transferred their most important asset — their gold — to 

America. 

* * 
# 

Austria alone needs philanthropic assistance as an act 

of charity, because the Paris Conference destroyed all 

the political and economic conditions which had created 

and maintained Austria, and expressly prohibited the 

substitution of any other more or less tolerable conditions. 

* * 
# 

America's interest is to contribute not through charity, 
but through commercial credits to re-establish confidence. 

If the American Trade fears to see the foreign 
exchange reduced in such proportion as not to be 
negotiable, American Trade itself must support the entire 
responsibility. 

The present exchange situation is false. 

Unlimited American mistrust created by domestic 
politics and complications are the principal cause. 

The exchange crisis is unjustified commercially and 
financially. 

It is a breakdown of international credit. 

The elementary principles of trading without 
monetary value as it was in primitive times is the 
only system which shows that gold means nothing, and 
its value can be reduced conventionally if many nations 
will adopt a new monetary system. 

European nations, like France and England, Italy, 
Germany and others, will never disappear from the face 
of the earth, and wealth means imperishable natural 
resources and production, which are to-day only dis- 
organised after five years' war. 

* ' # 

The international Trade to-day does not need any 
more Government departments to deal with commercial 

63 



exchange and banking. These departments were 
necessary evils during the war, but they are responsible 

for much of this international mistrust. 

# 

# # 

The United States have to face several problems 
closely connected with a large part of its own population, 
composed of the Germans and Irish. 

Each has equal rights to claim protection, assistance 
and indemnity. 

But it is very difficult to anticipate the direction of the 
new American policy. 

In the meantime Europe has to wait until the next 
fall, or next winter. 

And who can deny that the present situation is but 
the prologue to the coming political movement ? 

In any case the Government's foreign policy is for 
the time being in suspense. 

With a new President in office Europe has to face a 
fresh start, a new policy and a new discussion. 

But in the meantime will American Trade be left free 
without any political influence to re-establish lost 
European confidence ? 

Will the League of Nations and the Peace Treaty 
interfere no more in the private trading between the 
nations ? 

XX 

American Trade does not need any Government 
control, which proved to be during the war not only 
destructive, but largely responsible for the present 
European catastrophe. 

Governments are the worst controllers, they are 
ignorant merchants as distributors of finances. 

The private American trade possesses its united organi- 
zations. It is in a position to know what it can do, or 

what it must do. 

# 

* # 

We are witnessing the inevitable results of the 
Government's exaggerated restrictions during the war, 

6 4 



the non-intelligent, uncommercially worked plans which 
undermined American Trade and forced exporters to 
close their business. 

The Armistice found the American warehouses over- 
stocked with goods, and the rush created the international 
panic, which cost so many millions of dollars' loss to 
American and European Trade. 

Here again the Government proved its want of 
efficiency, and also its wrong judgment regarding the 

duration of the war. 

* 

* * 

The Government's duty is to protect the American 
Trade in its official way, organizing a complete trade 
system abroad with special commissions, chambers of 
commerce, special commercial advisors attached to the 
Embassies or Consulates, composed of well-trained, 
experienced, business men, with past high reputation and 
commercial careers. 

Registries of foreign buyers by category of importance, 
with all the details of their pre-war, during the war, and 
after the war activities, year of foundation, financial and 
moral standing of the members of each concern, their 
banking connections, their domestic and foreign business, 
their special capacities for each category of goods, the 
volume of business, their management, from where they 
were buying, and are buying, their supplies, packing, 
quality of goods, prices of competitors, and many other 
details which no mercantile agency can now fully furnish. 

# * 

The daily official bulletin of Consular reports published 
during the war was very poor. 

A special official organ must be published, twice 
monthly at least, for the needs of the foreign markets, 
showing the business opportunities, the production, and 
the industrial and national resources of each country, and 
possibilities for future outlets, especially for the con- 
struction of railroads, electric and water plants, trolley 
cars, gas plants, port works, shipping yards, and other 
public works, building of bridges and roads, mining 

65 



enterprises, building of factories, lumber exploitations, 
etc., etc., where the American up-to-date machinery and 
material will find permanent outlets in countries like the 
Near East, and especially in the Balkan States, very 
large fields with unlimited possibilities for American 
Trade which are not yet studied by the American busi- 
ness men. 

* 
* # 

The possibilities are unlimited in Europe, and 
America's domestic system of work when cleverly 
adapted to the foreign Trade will be in a position to 
capture foreign countries, not only in its own interest, 
but also for the benefit and progress of the foreign nations 
themselves, as no civilising power is more effective than 
honestly and systematically handled foreign Trade. 

This means real work, and not huge plans where the 
official messages are gigantic in conception, but at the 
bottom is discredit and mistrust. 



It was a false idea upon which the so-called official 
preparedness started its work. 

This reconstruction period, so largely advertised, was 
stopped by the exchange. 

Why did American Trade limit itself only to the 
devastated countries, like France, and not look further 
where millions of people are living lacking every 
industry, in countries where communications are still in 
a primitive state, where the natural resources are 
unlimited and the countries are rich? 



66 




GERMANY. 



Germany, 
i. 

I have known Germany as a student and as a 
merchant. 

I knew her in her justifiable Trade ambitions, in her 
pride of achievement, as well as in her blind fanaticism 
and militaristic mania. 

Everyone who has had trade relations with Germany 
must admit that the German in business affairs is 
honest and correct, prompt and precise, a master of 
system and organization in his affairs. 

The Germans contributed in the largest degree to 
American Trade progress and banking. 

Attention to the smallest details was a feature in 
which German business methods excelled, and in 
which American business methods show a marked 
weakness. 

A well known German business man once remarked 
to me, " small details in trade are part of the whole, as 
the pfennige are part of the mark." 

" I see," he said, "how careless Americans are about 
details, and for that reason I transact my business 
through our German houses abroad, in preference to 
other foreign houses." 

* 
# # 

Germany of to-day, after her crushing defeat, presents 
a pitiable picture. 

She is indeed, a political, social, commercial and 
financial wreck. 

Her people are discouraged and depressed, un- 
certain of the future, fearful of the taxes, appalled at 
the depreciation of their money, and in despair as to 
their debts. 

69 



Their self-confidence is lost, as is all confidence in 
everything German. 

They are impatient, revolted. After their big dream 
of a world hegemony what a pitiful and humiliating 
awaking! 

German socialism is bankrupt, imperialism in flight, 
militarism suppressed, and ever-present is the menacing 
spectre of Russia. 

If the German people could procure passports, 
Germany would be empty in a few months. 

Germany and Austria to-day are for sale — this is 
the real situation. 

Rich old-established concerns, factories, collections of 
objets dart, real estate, castles, titles, jewels, etc., are all 
for sale, not for marks but for gold. 

Gone is the ideal of home in the Fatherland, gone 
the national pride and patriotism. 



Pan-Germanism was an illusion, and we must hope to 
see it replaced by a justified "vernunftigen" Germanism. 

Germany of to-day is in one sense better and healthier. 
No longer does she suffer from the ills of a militaristic 
career under which she was doomed to break down 
regardless of victory or defeat. 

For Germans, defeat was the quickest antidote to the 
military obsession. Now must they employ to their 
fullest the most characteristic of their qualities —patience 
and industry. 

They must turn everything to profit in order to 
ameliorate their social and political life. 

They must study national life from a different angle. 

Internationalization is the true concept of life. 

Thus only will they profit by a lesson which has cost 
them the loss of their national wealth and millions of 
lives. 



If the German people in their stubbornness should once 
more try to raise the ideal of the old despotic glory and 

70 



to re-establish the old tyranny, then will the national 
decomposition begin in the shape of civil war. 

Germany needs union under some new political rdgime 
in accord with the sentiment of the newly-created 
national spirit. 

German labour helots must be organized and must 
allow the influence of the English trade unions to have 
access to their organizations. 



II. 

We crossed the Belgian frontier and entered the 
German occupied territory. 

This is the happiest part of all Germany to-day. 

On all sides soldiers of the Allied nations. 

Who could have believed five years ago, that Germany 
was so soon destined to pass under foreign military 
control. 

The presence of the Italian troops is a cause pour rire. 

On the faces of the people defeat is written. 

Politeness and courtesy is shown to allied officers 
by the railroad conductors and the civic population in 
general. The French are the most respected ; the 
English come next, but the Americans are absolutely 
detested. 

# 

# * 

Generally speaking, the Germans recognise the wrong 
done to France and Belgium. 

The Germans as a rule, avoid any discussion about 
the war. 

They consider war to-day as a nightmare, as some- 
thing which they cannot believe and yet could not avoid. 

There are so many things to discuss and argue about 
that they do not know where to start and where to 
finish. 

They know that they were wrong. 

At the first German station at which we stopped, a 
youth was selling newspapers and books. 



He was about fifteen years old and spoke fluently, 
English, French, Italian and German. 

A French officer travelling with us remarked that 
these German boys were clever and hardworking, and 
many of them had rendered good services to the Army 
of Occupation. 

He happened to know this boy in particular and 
informed us that he was the protector of a family 
consisting of his two sisters and his mother, his father 
having been killed in the war. 

# " # 

In all the manufacturing districts the chimneys are 
smokeless — no coal, no raw material. 

In the old days these districts gave the impression 
of one huge factory working day and night. 



Cologne is occupied by Great Britain — an excellent 
trade occupation. 

English trade policy was clever in this arrangement. 

The Rhine was from the time of the Armistice until 
now the most important means of transport. 

Mayence, Coblentz and Crefeld are positively nothing 
as compared with Cologne in its importance as a Trade 
centre. 

# * 

In Cologne we were obliged to pass under British 
military control, while British subjects enjoyed special 
privileges. 

Our residence was fixed for us by means of a billet de 



Food was restricted in quantity, and bad in quality. 
The Germans in the occupied territories are making 
money through the foreigners. 

# 
* # 

We met lots of American buyers coming from the 
Frankfurter fair. 

From them we learned their regret that the German 
production was so limited, and also that in some articles 

72 



the production had been already sold for several years 
in advance. 



From Frankfort to Berlin, and from Berlin to 
Diisseldorf, our journey was a real martyrdom. 

No steam heating in the trains, windows broken or 
cracked. We paid for first-class and were provided 
with third. We paid for sleeping cars, but such did not 
exist. 

We were forced to pass the whole night in a freezing 
corridor. 

A first-class empty compartment bore the legend 
" reserved." 

A young German deputy on learning from the con- 
ductor that the carriage in question was being reserved 
for some rich German family, obliged him to open it. 

This rich family reservation was the conductor's 
speculative game. 



We were saved from starvation through the kindness 
of a young Austrian lady coming from Wiesbaden, who 
kindly shared her " box buffet " with us, and saw her 
week's provision disappear in a few hours ! 

To secure a room in Berlin was quite an enterprise. 
Food was scarce, but almost anything was procurable 



with money. 



Berlin was, and is still, for Russia and Austria, a 
business centre, and also for the Near East and 
Balkanized Europe. 

German people mean business. 

Germany to-day is the cheapest country for the 
foreigner, and the dearest for the German. 

In Berlin Scandinavians, Dutch and Jews were buying 
everything procurable, and speculating on the Exchange. 
France is doing a very restricted business in Germany. 

73 



I learned from an official source that Austria had 
received an offer from some Allied Government to pro- 
vide her with foodstuffs and coal, accepting as collateral 
security all her national art treasures ! 

For a few thousand dollars an American can buy a 
beautifully furnished residence in Vienna, and a fine 
house in Pariser Platz in Berlin. 

The German and Austrian aristocratic families are 
tasting the dead sea fruit of their glory and privileges 
reflected and granted by their Kaisers and Kings, and 
to-day almost beg for their bread. 

One knowing Germany and Austria in their palmy 
days would not credit the pitiful change of to-day. 

# 

# # 

Public security in Berlin does not exist. 

At eleven o'clock one night my friend and I were 
" held up " at the corner of Friedrichstrasse by three 
persons, two of them in uniform and mere youths from 
eighteen to twenty years old. 

Social discipline and military control are lost for the 
moment. 

Germany is passing a transitory period, and one must 
expect such incidents when pan-militaristic control is 
being replaced by an independent political regime. 

# 

# # 

The absence of the military uniform, which was 
such a prominent feature before the war, is a striking 
fact. 

Gone is that military mosaic of beautiful uniforms and 
parades, gone is the casque a pointe, or if a few are still 
to be seen they only help to emphasize the dirt of the 
uniforms beneath them. 

On my way to Essen I met a young German officer, 
resplendent in a new and attractive uniform. 

I learned he was one of the survivors of the Imperial 
Guard. Several medals adorned his breast, and he 
wore a monocle with an air of military hauteur. 

I asked him to explain the sudden disappearance of the 
German officer from public view. 

74 



" They still exist," he said, "but are no longer to be 
seen in uniform. An uniform to-day costs a fortune. 
Many of the officers are already engaged in business. 
A large number are starving. After the flight of the 
Kaiser German military pride received its death blow. 
In future our role will be that of guarding the German 
Republic." 

III. 

From Dusseldorf to Berlin the berths in the sleeping 
cars were all reserved. 

We sat in a compartment with two broken windows. 

The conductor offered us at midnight two berths at 
two hundred marks each. 

In the morning we obtained a cup of coffee Ersatz, or 
Bonnenkaffee, with a single piece of bread, and a 
microscopic piece of sugar for twenty marks, plus a tip 
of five marks for this luxurious breakfast. 

My companion was a Jewish merchant, travelling 
with a diplomatic passport ! 

Gone are the glorious days when precision and 
discipline distinguished the German railroad service ! 

# 

# # 

In Dusseldorf I was received by Dr. R. Schmidt- 
Ernesthausen in his beautiful home facing the park. 

He was mobilised during the war, and is a specimen 
of the good German officer. 

He was a believer in the Kaiser's doctrine, and one 
of the many disappointed pan-Germanists. 

His conversation gave me precious information about 
the then condition of Germany, which I afterwards 
studied personally and found correct. 

# # 

His brother, Mr. Oscar Schmidt- Ernesthausen, is a 
real international German. 

He spent most of his life in India as Consul, and in 
England in his private capacity. 

He is a British subject. 

75 



He lost all his fortune, and had his business confiscated, 
like so many thousands of Germans abroad, and to-day- 
he is confined in Germany and unable to resume his 
business activities. 

How many good international Germans are suffering 
to-day because of a lunatic man ? 



IV. 

It is surprising the amount of goods exported to 
France and Belgium by private people from Germany 
in packets. 

This kind of Trader is called Schieber. 

The corridors of the train were crowded with house- 
hold articles, bicycles, chemicals, etc., belonging to these 
private traders who were furnishing their homesteads, 
taking advantage of the Exchange. 
# 

From Cologne to Berlin the train was so crowded 
that at one station several people loaded with parcels 
clung on the footboards and travelled so. 

Several accidents occurred, and a few slipped under 
the wheels of the train. 

There was no distinction of classes ; many were 
travelling first class with third class tickets. 

# * 

Tickets were charged according to the frontier in 
French francs, Belgian francs or marks, and the railway 
ticket employees are, at the same time, exchange brokers. 

The conditions at the German railroad stations were 
chaotic, and the time of arrival and departure of trains 
uncertain. 

* * 

In the occupied British territory all the first-class 
compartments were reserved for military service, and 
although the railway service sells first class tickets, a 
traveller could with difficulty find a seat in a third or 
fourth class compartment. 

76 



In Cologne British control was very severe in the 
beginning, and all foreigners except British were obliged 
to wait in the cold for over an hour for the passport 
inspection. 

One day two French travellers losing patience broke 
a pane of glass in the official control office in order to 
call attention to the way they were being treated, and 
then the control passed to the French authorities for 
their own people. 

In Cologne Germans were excluded from the best 
cafes and restaurants ; these were exclusively reserved 
for the Allies. 

Several of the best hotels were reserved for the British 
authorities. 

V. 

It is surprising the initiative and inventive powers 
shown by the Germans during the war in replacing 
food stuffs, tyres, leathers, clothing, etc , by substitutes. 

These replaced articles were known as Ersatz. 

I tried Ersatz beer and coffee, and found them bitter 
and unpalatable. 

The colour alone gives the suggestion of the replaced 
product. 

I saw metallic spring bands replacing the tyres on 
motor vehicles. 

The self-denial submitted to by the Germans in the 
matter of food, in which respect they were very big 
eaters, and the many other heavy sacrifices they made 
is a cause of astonishment, especially when all was 
patiently borne to satisfy the ambition of a lunatic, who 
had inspired millions with hope and faith in his divine 

mission for the conquest of the world. 
* 

* # 

The Jews in ;very land are the only people who 
never become downhearted. 

They regard things coolly and never miss an oppor- 
tunity of making money. 

For them war enthusiasms and war ideals do not exist. 
Money is their sacred idol on earth. 

77 



While so many millions of Gentile families in Europe 
are suffering, the Jews are like so many worms 
penetrating in the decombres of aristocratic treasures 
and making money out of the discouraged German 
patriots who, a few years ago, were their masters. 

My impression is that to-day, Germany is a business 
opportunity for the Jewish merchants — it is a sort of 
bargain. 

The European Jewish element is making money 
with things Gentile business men regard as worthless. 

The Jews have foresight, and they anticipated 
Germany's downfall, having judged the Kaiser's policy 
with calm and unbiassed minds. 

The Jewish element is making money everywhere 
to-day — in Russia, Turkey, France, Germany, Austria, 
etc. 

They know how to face the reality and the meaning 
of Trade in abnormal times. 

The European Jews have been, through centuries of 

persecution, trained in such atmosphere of business. 

* 

My only consolation in Berlin was an excellent dinner 
I had at Mr. Jacques Krako's nice home. 

I found there American abundance, at a time when 
butter, sugar, coffee, etc., were in Berlin considered as 
something metaphysical in both restaurants and private 
Gentile families. 

His guests numbered some of the best Berlin society. 
American dances were provided, and everything was as 
if war had never been. 

I remarked that while in Gentile circles war was a 
constant topic of conversation, in Jewish society the 
word war was never mentioned. 

VII. 

Speculation. 

To-day, Germany and Austria are reduced to a state 
of financial decomposition by the most incredible 
speculation the history of Trade has ever known. 

78 



Up to a few months ago a growing confidence towards 
Germany was noticeable among the trading nations. 
What remained of Germany's once powerful trade 
struggled hard to merit this confidence, and sought by 
every means to strengthen the position of its exchange. 
But unfortunately, speculation accomplished its ends in 
the domestic sphere, and to-day the German exchange 
is like a feather in the wind. 

German paper money was printed and reprinted, and 
the huge amounts put in circulation have brought its 
value down to vanishing point. 

Foreign speculators bought everything negotiable or 
saleable in Germany with German money. 

Austria is sold out entirely. 

To-day, while the pound is considered as a pound in 
England, and a franc as a franc in France, quite regard- 
less of their value on the foreign exchange, the German 
mark tends to become worthless, not only on the foreign 
exchanges, but also in Germany itself. 

This is, of course, a step in the direction of bankruptcy. 



If a silver mark in Germany to-day is worth five or six 
paper marks, and if it is bought and sold in trade, this 
means the beginning of a new monetary movement in 
Germany which will lead to the total depreciation of the 
present paper money and its withdrawal from circulation. 
If mistrust be created and if German domestic trade 
refuse paper money and if the holder of paper money 
must change it in purchase of silver coins, a panic will 
result and the silver coin will replace the paper money. 
Germany can expect only very limited help from France 
and England, seeing that the financial conditions in both 
countries are very uncertain. 

America, which can help, is still silent, still waiting to 
take a decision, always with an eye to the position of 
internal politics. 

America's debtor, England, is a good solvent debtor. 

England's debtors are all the other Allies — all bad 
debtors for the moment. 

79 



If America's interests were connected with all the 
Allied nations directly and separately, without having 
England in the position of an intermediary, conditions 
would be better. 

Germany to-day is at the mercy of the most 
ignominious speculators, external and internal, the one 
as bad as the other. 

The only nation which respects Germany's misery is 
France, her most pitiful victim, and next in order, 
England, her second victim. 

Germany's neighbours who helped her during the war 
and absorbed most of her wealth and trade, are to day 
buying Germany out with her own money. 



What has Austria to expect ? 

An official Austrian delegate, to whom I spoke in 
Berlin, told me of the desperate plight of his country. 
I give his own words : — " We have heard thousands 
of propositions — all American — but we have no money, 
except paper money, but we can give guarantees to any 
amount, houses, grounds, factories, artistic collections, 
our banks with paper currency, but — no gold. We are 
selling to-day everything saleable to procure bread and 
coal — we even accept charity. Austria's one hope 
to-day is Germany. Her fate is ours. Germany's 
bankruptcy will mean for Austria disaster — complete 
annihilation." 

No nation on earth will consider Austria as a business 
proposition for the present. 

Austria's present situation cries aloud for some huge 
philanthropic scheme, for a charity propaganda, for some 
relief from the agonies of cold and hunger. 



Germany now expects assistance from America. 

The new election movement in the States is for 
Germany a source of hope. 

German people believe that the struggle for power in 
America will give an opportunity to the German and 

80 



pro-German elements in the United States to impos e 
their own terms for Germany. 

They count with confidence on the huge German 
population, and on those in Europe who are hostile to 
American- European policy. 

The non-ratification of the Peace Treaty by the 
Senate, and the League of Nations from which America 
is excluded until now, inspire more confidence in 
Germany to-day and raise the hope for a special direct 
peace with America. 

Germany to-day has lost her nerves. 

She should give a lesson to international speculators 
in her misfortune by declaring an official bankruptcy. 



VIII. 

Crossing the Unter den Linden on a moonlight night, 
I passed before the Imperial Schloss, which I knew in 
its ancient glory, in its days of militaristic panoply. 
To-day, with its fac^ade in ruins as a result of the 
revolution, it looks quite a simple pile. 

To-morrow doubtless, it will pass to the artistic 
protocols as a national monument, with perhaps a statue 
of the Kaiser in front as a souvenir of its ancient glory, 
or mayhap as a monument to German independence. 

We have known Germany as a model of Empire. 
To-morrow, Germany will take her place among the 
nations as a model of another system — may be as a 
republic — the perfect republic. 

Science and labour are Germany's imperishable and 
sacred traditions. 



National ideals and inspirations are a question of 
imagination and time. 

Every national event has a double interpretation. 
No good without evil. 

Most criminal events have found their idealization in 
history. 

Si 



Between a Caesar, a Napoleon, or a Kaiser, there is 
no difference. 

The official crown was their profession, the world's 
conquest their ideal, but time brings forgetfulness for 
the martyrs and immortality for the criminal. 

Through the mist of time our angle of vision is apt 
to be blurred, and our judgment somewhat befogged. 

To-morrow the Kaiser will fill the place of a Napoleon 
in the eyes of Germany and a kindly historian will 
draw the veil of silence over his criminal folly, and 
paint his virtues with no unerring stroke. 

History is the weakness of humanity. 



IX. 

A young Hungarian gentleman, Mr. Josef Guttmann, 
left Budapesth by motor with several valises, containing 
gold, titles, paper money, and several valuable documents. 

Near Berlin he was obliged to take the train for want 
of petrol. 

On arrival in Berlin he engaged a taxi to take him to 
the hotel Adlon. 

At the hotel door he met an old friend, and in the 
excitement of this meeting he failed to notice that the 
smallest and most valuable of his valises was left in the 
cab. 

He had not taken the precaution of noting the 
number of the cab, and though he secured the assistance 
of the police his efforts to find his valise were unsuccess- 
ful. 

At the suggestion of my friend, Mr. Oscar Schmidt 
Erusthausen, he inserted an advertisement in the news- 
paper offering fifteen thousand marks' reward for the 
recovery of his valise. 

A few days subsequently a gentleman presented him- 
self at the hotel with the valise, and the delighted 
proprietor paid over the reward plus a beautiful gold 
cigarette case. 



Mr. Guttmann asked this gentleman if he had guessed 
at what the contents were. 

"Yes, sir," he replied, "I believe it contains gold, and 
perhaps paper money. Gold, anyhow, because I have 
heard it jingle. I felt it my duty to return it, no matter 
what it contained." 

This proves that honesty in Germany is not yet 
extinct. 

I knew another instance of a similar kind where a 
lady, who had left a valuable fur coat in a cab had it 
returned to her promptly, and the finder refused to 
accept a reward. 

X. 

During the reign of terror in Hungary a highly placed 
clergyman escaped with a very big sum of money and 
settled in Berlin at a most expensive hotel. 

His manners and bearing inspired respect in all who 

met him. My friend Mr. X invited him one 

day to dinner, and afterwards to the Palais de Danse. 
The clergyman was in mufti. 

On entering the dancing hall two dancers, a youth 
and a young girl, were going through some very com- 
plicated Tango dancing. 

The clergyman seemed quite absorbed in the perform- 
ance of these two dancers, and when the couple retired 
he sought them out 

A few days later my friend received an invitation to 
afternoon tea from the clergyman, and was much 
surprised to find our two dancers present, and later to 
witness the clergyman having a dancing lesson, which 
he was told cost three hundred marks ! 

This explained the reason of the interview with the 
dancers at the Palais de Danse, where the clergyman 
was so smitten that he decided on having lessons, and 
to-day he is a professional dancer. 

This is one instance out of thousands of the most 
extraordinary permutations which have taken place in 
social life during the period of anarchy. 

83 



Everywhere there is complete social disorganisation, 
and moral and social prestige is in bankruptcy. 

We see before our eyes the evolution of a new Europe 
and a new social arrangement. 



XI. 

This war changed everything, especially in tha social 
life of the former Central Powers. 

It brought about the bankruptcy of everything 
aristocratic, militaristic, autocratic and moral. 

Imperial royal courts and aristocratic parasites 
disappear. 

Flight is considered a sign of honour. 

Castles are empty, official treasurers are gone, having 
taken with them everything valuable, portable, and 
negotiable. 

I met, travelling third class, a lady-in-waiting at the 
Austrian Court, who was escaping with her last belong- 
ings, and had a chat with her on the condition of things 
in Austria. 

I reproduce her actual words ; — 

" Things as they are just now are simply in- 
describable. The future is absolutely hopeless. Real 
estate possessions of to-day may, or may not, be 
adjudged yours to-morrow. Uncertainty everywhere. 
I sold a large estate to a few speculators and also a rare 
collection of pictures. They paid me part in paper and 
part in gold. I am spending the paper now while it 
has any value left. Speculators are allowed to buy now 
but no one knows what the Government's decision may be 
to-morrow. These properties have been illegally bought, 
but we had to sell. Our banks are as if they never 
existed. No confidence. No credit. I lost parents 
and relatives owing to the war. I saved everything I 
could in order to get out and rest. I witnessed the 



Hungarian slaughter." 



*4 



CHOSES VECUES. 



The End of a Black Parade 



i. 

On a bright sunny day Washington main street 
witnessed the passing of a pompous parade of men in 
frock coats and top hats, full of subdued pride and 
enthusiasm, as befits those who participate in a national 
patriotic parade under official sanction. 

This was the first official parade, and marked the 
beginning of the war advertising campaign. 

The President took his place in the middle of the pro- 
cession. 

Flags were borne aloft by stalwart American youths, 
and the strains of martial music inspired the crowd. 

This was the dawn of a new ideal — the birth of a 
national pride and ambition. 

In truth it was the beginning of the end — the funeral 

parade of a free nation going where ? to an open 

grave in which have since been buried so many national 
dreams, so much old time independence, and peace to 
all so precious. 

# *= 
I watched this national enthusiasm, at first restrained 
and more or less unconscious, slowly reach a stage of 
delirium. 

In Europe one is accustomed to these traditional 
slavery parades, these military splendours with all their 
theatrical devices. 

Czars, kaisers and kings, who for generations have 
sapped the independence of their subjects, mere puppets 
of the military caste, idols to the unthinking peoples. 

Atavism in our ideals, romantic inspirations, patriotic 

87 



fanaticism, stupid ambitions and degenerated pride — 
and on top nothing. 

A Trotsky and a Lenin are a reality to-day. 

# 

# # 

This parade was composed of peaceful honest citizens, 
athletic and clean cut (in face and figure) manhood in a 
nation of men — in the middle the Puritan face of a 
leader, whose doctrine was that of the Kaiser, power by 
all means, power which hides all things — scandals, faults, 

etc. 

# 

# # 

Military parades, unlike the European theatrical 
masquerades, with harlequin colours and pierrot faces, 
but parades of real healthy manhood, simple in dress, 
disciplined in self-respect and love of country. 

All these masses were raised, concentrated, armed, 
and organized into a formidable army, which fought and 
won, and for what ? 

For an ideal which never existed, for false moral 
principles, imposed by gold and never practised by the 
leaders, for an ambition never sincere, for a national 
pride which masked the golden power of an autocratic 
gang, and the sacred idol — the country — is now like 
a dark cloud hiding a legion of golden tyrants. 

* 

# # 

I passed an evening in a theatre where a well-known 
actress was preaching patriotism. 

She had not well digested the demagogic patriotic 
vocabulary, though she knew her speech by heart. 

She asked her audience for " Nails for the Kaiser's 
coffin." 

The nails were dollars. Certainly a good allegory. 

Her persuasive powers failing to elicit the dollars she 
offered her kisses by auction ! 

The first one fetched twenty dollars, but the subse- 
quent ones were disposed of much more cheaply. 

The public was not yet propagandised. 

The war enthusiasm had not penetrated to their 
pockets. 

88 



Soon I was to witness the gigantic Liberty Loans 
Campaign, to which millions of dollars were daily 
subscribed. 

I then remembered with regret that I had failed to 
take advantage of the beautiful actress's kisses— they 
were so cheap by comparison ! 

Human life, human comedy — what irony of fate when 
a free nation is dragged to the slaughter with flowers, 
smiles and kisses. 

I have seen kisses that cost the recipient ten thousand 
dollars, and I have heard the offer of a famous moving 
picture star to climb the down pipe in front of a thirty 
floor building for one million dollars ! 

How small we are in Europe ! 



II. 

Everything for the boys. 

Everything of the best. 

This is a credit to the American people. 

With dollars everything was bought, even conscience 
and life. 

Everywhere the practical American business mind 
supported the War inspiration, the artificially created 
patriotic fanaticism. 

The Government Insurance Service created within a 
few months, and as perfectly organised as if it had 
existed for centuries, solicited the old men and women 
to "give us soldiers, and we pay their lives with your 

money." 

# 
# * 

In Wall Street, crowds listened to ^patriotic speakers 
in front of the Treasury Department and Morgan's 
Bank. 

The huge golden barometer of the Liberty Loan 
campaign indicated the time for the completion of the 
total national subscription — only a few weeks in which to 
raise several billion dollars. 

89 



American people, innocent, healthy, and honest, 
wonderful liberty lovers — consolation and refuge for the 
Old World's social victims and political martyrs — your 
turn came, and your destiny was a fatality for your 
Motherland ! 

# 

* * 

On the cinema screen pass the leading political 
figures, the army, the navy, and the flag, and at the end 
of every performance tender hands collect the dollars. 
To-morrow those same hands may bind the wounds of 
returned relatives. 

# 

* # 

I passed through the crowds, and I reflected. 

These human beings, who to-night howl in happy 
delirium, to-morrow will be gone. 

Well-paid labour returns its wages against Liberty 
Bonds, and to-morrow will be paid with its own taxes — 
its own money. Companies buying millions of Liberty 
Bonds, and getting in exchange war contracts for millions, 
will be paid with the people's money. 

And only the gold mausoleum will remain sad and 
silent in a cruel immortality— the Treasury Department 
— which one day will transfer its golden conscience to 
some other country's mausoleum. 

This is a fate which no one escapes. 

What cruel fate has destined this nation, once so free 

and happy, to social slavery. 

# 

* * 

The elections of 1916 will be noted in the history of 
the United States as a fateful epoch, as fateful as was the 
day of the battle of the Marne for Germanv. 



III. 

Blackmailers. 

The nationality of their victim was the chief ground 
of their operations, and their reproach of being "a pro- 
German " their menace. 

90 



A small publication issued by the Pan-American 
patriots, and entitled, "Who are our enemies?" supple- 
mented their audacity with a rich literature of invective. 

A cleverly cultivated feeling of hate took the place of 
the altruism of the American people. 

This was the official moral education of the twenty 
thousand war millionaires who to-day represent the 
once free and happy American nation. 



To be a member of the Secret Service was a privilege 
for the American citizen, regardless of his origin, and an 
honour for business purposes for all the unscrupulous 
speculators. 

America endorsed the military overcoat and the helmet 
in order to play the war pantomime. 

America's first war lesson was the dearest, and meant 
the destruction of the principles of a peaceful social life 
after her cynical adhesion to the slaughter doctrine. 

John Bull played Uncle Sam. 

No American citizen dared to breathe a word against 
England, because she was one of the Allies. 

This was officially intimated ! 

No more free opinion ! 

# 
* * 

The Secret Service was everywhere watching. 

I was well-known to the cable companies, and also to 
the cable censor. 

During the war I spent one half of my working time 
in the censor's office in Broad Street, and the balance in 
the offices of the different official war organisations in 
New York and Washington, or in the War Intelligence 
office. 

Formalities, intrigues, restrictions, regulations, control, 
prohibitions, and many other such terms, which formed 
a rich vocabulary of unknown expressions to the 
American Trade, kept me busy. 

American Trade was controlled by the so-called 
Foreign or Allied High Commissions, whose official 
influence has proved so disastrous to American trade. 

9i 



Retired majors and colonels were looking for war jobs. 

These titles were a sort of capital for them in the 
same way as being a Belgian at the beginning of the 
war was a business proposition. 

One day I received a telephone call from Washington, 
supposed to be from some official war service, War 
Trade Board, or Chief Cable Censor. 

" Colonel X or Major Tare asking for a special appoint- 
ment. Very important," was the call. 

I gave the required appointment, and the colonel 
called in due course. 

" The Government is publishing a special review or 
registry for the boy soldiers, sailors, officers, Navy, 
Army, etc., and you are in the list of contributors. 

Please sign — it costs only ; " was the substance 

of his important communication. 

The scheme was clever. 

The telephone call was from Washington, while the 
supposed official colonel or major was in Bronx, arriving 
the next day from Washington Heights. 

When the colonel received a categorical refusal he 
used the standard menace in his best imperative tone of 
voice. 

" That's right, you're a pro-German. You are a 
money maker while our brave boys are fighting at the 

front for democracy." 

# 

# # 

But the Cable Censor knew all about our money- 
making, and the Cable Companies also who, while 
collecting our money sent our cables to be classified to 
our censored files. 

According to the law of common sense, which no war 
regulations can change, for every cable not sent out of 
the country the money should never be collected. 

# 

* # 

The Cable Censor for the privileged patriotic traders 
was a source of information about their competitor's 
business, and if they considered their competitor's 
business a good desirable one, and if the competitor was 

92 



a non-American or an alien American citizen, then the 
next step was the extermination policy, by means of the 
" Pro-German standardized system. 

The next step was the Democratic Secret Service, 
with its terrible Black-list, which effectually ruined the 
unfortunate competitor. 



My turn came. 

I was summoned to the War Intelligence Office. 
Fortunately the chief officer was a real American gentle- 
man — a banker's son -a healthy youth, morally and 
physically. 

He read to me a few lines of the so-called official 
Secret Service Report. 

He smiled as he read. 

His expression made things clear to me, I saw I had 
no need to worry. 

Your wife was a German ; your little daughter is not 
yours ; you studied in Germany ; you are carrying a 
revolver ; you are living with a nice-looking young 
German lady ; you are bribing the foreign consular 
service in order to have your mail communications 
through the official service, etc. 

The officer could not continue his reading, and finished 
with a fit of laughter. 

I gave him complete satisfaction by means of official 
and indisputable documentary proofs, which completely 
exposed the false statements of the Secret Service 
Report. 

His official report about me was a very flattering one, 
and it helped me in obtaining, on the 26th November, 
1918, two special permissions from the United States' 
Shipping Board and the Emergency Fleet Corporation, 
and another, on the 4th December, 1918, direct from 
the United States' Shipping Board, to dispose of a large 
amount of wooden and steel vessels for the account of 
the United States Government, with the privilege of the 
transfer of the flag to the Allied nations, accompanied 
by a special permission from the Chief Cable Censor to 

93 



communicate free of any censorship ; granted on 29th 
November, 191 8. 

# * 

* 

In a country where over twenty million inhabitants 
are of German origin, and where the scholar President 
was a confessed admirer of German intellectual culture, 
the Government was trying to camouflage with patriotic 
phraseology and a shadow policy the citizens' nationality. 
" The next step will be to analyse the blood of our 
citizens. It is disgraceful to see our free country reduced 
to such slavery." 

This was the remark of an officer of the War Intelli- 
gence Service. 

IV. 
American Trade Corruption in Europe. 

Aboard I met Mr. X , president of an important 

new American company possessing a large organisation 
in Europe. 

His firm commenced business with very small capital 
during the war. 

The president confided to me his pitiful position 
previous to the war. 

This company's French business made them very rich. 

The same applies to thousands of other American 
business firms. 

Mr. X was travelling with his personnel, and 

occupied a cabine de luxe. 

Everything in his entourage bespoke the power of the 
dollar. 

Imagine my astonishment on arriving in Paris with 
him to find him "held up" by the Customs authorities 
in an attempt to smuggle a considerable amount of cigars 
and tobacco, for which he was condemned in a heavy 
fine ! 

He looked quite ashamed of his humiliation, but his 
excuse showed a very quaint appreciation of ethics. 

94 



" We are Americans," he said, "and we have saved 
France. We are, therefore, entitled to better treatment ! " 

I met him subsequently in Paris, where he told me 
he had decided to settle definitely, and to buy an expen- 
sive residence "with dollars which buy everything for 
nothing." 

Unprincipled new Traders of this type, the real 
upstarts, are entirely responsible for the feeling which 
exists in Europe against American private Trade. 
They attempt to treat the people, to whom they owe 
their riches, as slaves. 

I happened to meet him again on my return to New 
York some few months later. 

The exchange had by this time begun to cause ruin 
on all sides. 

He had not escaped its effects, which had scattered 
his dreams of European business. 

"We can buy," said he, "Europe for nothing. 
Europe is for us a bad business proposition. France is 
poor and its people no good. It is time for us 
Americans to clear out. We must return home and 
close the door behind us to Europe." 

If American trade cannot speculate with European 
trade any further, American banking is speculating with 
the victims' last belongings, finishing what the former 
left over. 

# 
# * 

With the huge American war stocks in France, on 
which no import duty was charged, American traders on 
the spot tried to speculate, selling them to the private 
French Trade, describing the goods as " war material 
and supplies brought to France to save the country." 
The French Government intervened in the matter and 
bought the goods when the American Government had 
decided to burn them all. 

I knew many Americans who tried, without success, 
to participate in this grafting. 

It was the misfortune of the European Trade to have 
known but one side of American Trade, and that the bad 
side. 

95 



V. 

I once had the pleasure of meeting the Secretary of the 
American Chamber of Commerce in London on a 
matter of business. 

I found that he knew and understood Europe better 
than any of my American acquaintances. 

His mission in London seemed to be not only com- 
mercial and national, but also largely diplomatic 

His method and system of work are excellent. 

He is doing splendid work in connection with the 
settlement of questions and claims arising out of 
American European business. 

By dinners and other social functions he seeks an 
opportunity to adjust matters between the claimants, and 
as an arbitrator his talent is unquestionable. 

I sought him out to help me with his advice and 
experience with regard to a large shipment. 

The American supplier, the head of a well-known 
American concern, despite his signed agreement, refused 
to deliver the goods. 

This man's reply to my reasoned request for some 
explanation of his conduct was as follows ; — 

"It is our business whether we supply or not. 
Europeans need us and they must comply with our terms 
and conditions as we want, and when we cannot supply 
for the moment they must wait. We are indifferent, 
as we are making millions of profits." 

And like thousands of others this man disappeared. 

This golden parrot was once a good and honest sugar 
broker, and the war opened the door to him to become 
a millionaire. 

To-day he is no longer as he was before the war. 

He is now an autocratic, purse-proud despot, using 
the word "America" as the Germans did before the 



And it is not only that these autocratic traders 
discredit and victimize American Trade abroad, but 

96 



they contaminate directors of the best American banking 
institutions. 

The weight of their money and their American 
issue are enough for this purpose. 

The result of this autocratic frame of mind will be a 
European, or perhaps international, League of Nations 
against America. 

These trade discreditors are giving the greatest worry 
to all American officials abroad, who are trying to 
protect America's commercial honour in every possible 
way, and oftentimes under the most difficult circum- 
stances. 



97 



BOLSHEVISM. 



/ 



Bolshevism. 

i. 

Bolshevism is a danger or a social reform. 

If we consider Bolshevism as it first appeared in 
Russia, in its brutal and criminal aspects, as a revolution 
with pronounced tendencies to spread an anarchistic 
movement throughout the world — a ruthless movement 
without any fundamental principles of right and justice 
— Bolshevism is a real danger. 

But if this movement develop a social reorganization 
according to traditional socialistic doctrine, then Bolshev- 
ism is a social reform, an experiment in what has been 
academically taught for so many centuries past and 
under the eegis of which the Kaiser prepared during half 
a century his infernal work, and a constitutional 
President of the Land of Liberty accepted the role of a 
dictator. 

Trotsky and Lenin are experimenting with the 
sociology of centuries ; they are practising now what 
the theoretical sociologists preached, and are still 
preaching. 

# 
# # 

This was their address to the Russian people : — 

There is no law and no religion. 

You are the law ; God is dead. 

Your neighbour's property is yours. 

You are creating governments and nations. 

You are creating the wealth and property of the 

rich autocrats. 
Take it back by force and crime — it is stolen from 

you — it is yours. 
There are no official authorities. 
You are creating authority and power. 



You are the AIL 

Emperors and kings and governments are profes- 
sional criminals, whose place is the gaol, and not 
in history. 

Let us melt the military statues of the historical 
criminals, sell them and buy food for our starving 
brothers. 

Let us transform our cemeteries into open spaces 
for the health of our people. 

Let us use the churches and castles as dwellings 
for the homeless. 

Religions are a speculation next to militarism, 
where hypocrisy has been practised for centuries. 

The wealth of the rich autocrats will be divided 
and the future humanity will be a labour humanity, 
where none will have a right to accumulate 
the people's wealth or to enslave the working 
classes. 

Science is with us — it is the key to the future 
civilization of mankind. 



This was the beginning of the success of these two 
intellectual vagabonds, who were self-promoted to war 
ministers and geniuses, without any previous official 
training. 

It was criminal anarchy, but the only method promising 
success in Russia, where the deportation of political 
martyrs to Siberia was a legal system in order to keep 
enslaved millions of people of a healthy race. 

Socially reorganized Russia of to-morrow will be a 
liberal nation, and a real asset for Europe. 



The Allied nations to-day consider Bolshevism a 
danger, while the former Central Powers (though they 
could hope for a complete reform of their internal 
situation which would enable them to take a real 
advantage) are afraid that Bolshevism as it is 
practised to-day in Russia, would, owing to their people's 



war mentality, and the lack of military control and social 
discipline, be a dangerous experiment, as the movement 
once started would prove most difficult to master. 



It is certain that everyone to-day tries to fight against 
Bolshevism, and almost everyone is a Bolshevist and 
considers Bolshevism a necessary evil. 

But the European people prefer to suffer in patience, 
hoping for a better future, unwilling to listen to anarch- 
istic doctrines which promise everyone his neighbour's 
property by forced possession. 

But patience has its limits, and maybe their long suffer- 
ing will induce them to consider Bolshevism as a means 

of salvation. 

# 
# # 

But are we not taking a false view of Bolshevism when 
we consider it as an unjustifiable phenomenon or as an 
isolated event ? 

The labour classes have always tried to organize 
secret societies in order to bring home to society their 
exploitation by an idle class living on their work. 

The anarchist and other political murderers express 
by their acts the people's feeling, and their conduct must 
be regarded in the light of a partial revolution. 

If kings or political leaders were killed, this fact did 
not change the social conditions, but was merely a 
cause of prejudice to the revolting classes. 

If a person styled "king" is condemned to continue 
the tradition of his ancestors, he is not directly respon- 
sible for the misery of the masses, he himself being in 
the vicious circle of a conventional struggle which he 
alone cannot possibly change. 

It is a fact, that the descendants of the ruling classes, 
to whom power has accrued, consider it a moral obligation 
to keep the working classes in constant suppression. 
Might was, but will not be, the Right of the privileged 
classes. 



103 



The promised social reforms are a demagogic game 
which keeps in eternal hope the suffering classes longing 
for a better future. 

But the centuries are succeeding each other, and the 
working classes — which are the vital element, the 
invisible root of the social tree— are kept in real slavery 
despite constitutional democratic or republic political 
systems. 

A few years ago no one would believe that Labour 

could organize itself as it is now, threatening to reverse 

the roles of our traditional social life, and bring about 

by heavy sacrifices the long expected social revolution. 

* 

# * 

The first steps in this movement were accomplished 
by the French Revolution, which upset traditional rights 
and social privileges, but the time was not ripe to 
generalise such a movement. 

The French spirit of reform forced its way in every 
period, destroying from time to time conventional social 
idols, and ever tending to bring about social equilibrium 
between the classes. 

At the time of the French Revolution communications 
were not as they are now. The entire world of to- 
morrow will be united. 

The internationalization of Labour is a fact for the 
future. 

The French spirit was, and will be the spirit leading 
people in the world who know what sacrifice without 
interest means. 

The spirit of Liberty is in the very blood of these 
high-minded people. 

This war proved that the French spirit is as it was, 
and that the French people are giants when the need 
calls on them. 

The three words " Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality " 
are not vague expressions — they are the people's 
doctrine, Labour's moral. 

# 

# # 

Germany started this war with a Waterloo. 
The Battle of the Marne was a fatality for humanity. 
104 



Germany's downfall proved once more the stupidity of a 
nation which tries to force the eternal law of the 
creation. 

Mankind's mission is the union of the nations. 

No race has any right to control others, and no 
doctrine of League of Nations can be respected by a 
united humanity if not based upon the principles of 
" Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality." 



Bolshevism is an international revolution regardless 
of how it started. Its outbreak was inevitable. This 
war was an opportunity for such a revolution. The 
nation which supported the first revolutionary shock has 
suffered most. Every successful revolution starts with 
exaggerated brutalities and cruelties. 

It is this same enthusiastic wildness, this same 
criminal instinct which transforms the peaceful citizen 
into the most criminal of warriors. 

The people are slow to decide and -to act, but once 
they understand that they are entitled to the wealth 
which they have created, and that they have a right to 
be co-proprietors, no force on earth can withstand them, 
as they themselves are force. 

Capital is their production, and capital must not be 
used to render its creators slaves. 



It is up to America to-day to protect Europe in order 
that the inevitable social revolution may be successful 
without recourse to civil wars, to which end the working 
classes are able to turn the political tide. 

If the Russian Revolution be considered by American 
politicians as a Russian matter only, and as something 
which can be suppressed by force of arms or confined by 
barbed wire, or if Bolshevism be considered as an 
isolated movement which will be easily extinguished, 
they are mistaken. 

Bolshevism even if for the moment checked will be 
before our doors to-morrow. 

i°5 



Everyone to-day is more or less a Bolshevist — our 
own politicians also. 

# # 
# 

Germany's downfall places the world at a new turning 
point for a new start. 

Germany's victory would have meant overgrown 
German militaristic power, her own ruin, and later, 
her own downfall. 

The overgrown militaristic element in any country 
means the suppression of the working and industrial 
classes, which are the vital elements of wealth. 

Militarism is the idle element : it is the parasite. 

Pan-Germanism is responsible for Germany's downfall. 
# 

# * 

Humanity is traversing a new and very critical period 
— political disagreements between the nations, personal 
ambitions of politicians, selfishness of leaders who have 
never known what hard work and privation mean. 

The Czar's power was annihilated by his own slaves, 
the Mouziks, who, two years ago did not know what 
liberty meant, and who are to-day the apostles, the 
crusaders of the people's rights, not indeed fighting with 
moral doctrines, but with the same brutal weapons with 

which equipped as slaves, they now employ as masters. 

# 

# * 

Science and Labour will guide humanity, the one is 
the strength of eternal truth, the other is the force of 
work. 

Science and truth will guide labour. 

Science has sprung from labour, and both are one. 

Europe has civilized America. 

The moral principles which America is now preaching, 
Europe first taught her. 

America is entirely a European creation with new 
methods and new life principles. The new American 
spirit must assist Europe. 

Though apparently the old European world is 
resisting this young and strong American moral 
influence, a new moral evolution is going on in Europe 
due to America. 

106 



REAL LEADERS FOR DEMOCRACY. 



A Model Leader. 

i. 

A simple lawyer in the island of Creta threw down 
the gauntlet to a real prince, a scion of the royal house 
of Greece, whose sister-in-law was the late Kaiser's 
sister, and at a time when to fight a prince was deemed 
a sacrilege. 

The prince was the military governor of the island — 
the lawyer was his legal adviser. 

At this period the political situation in Creta was very 
unsettled. 

Regarded by the nation as a revolutionary, and 
excommunicated by his Church, he carried on his fight 
with a nerve and courage rarely equalled in history. 

To counter his efforts the royal family decided to 
visit the island, so as to impress the inhabitants and 
enhance their prestige among them. 

There was a display of enthusiasm and many public 
entertainments were given in their honour. 

During a theatrical performance, at which the royal 
party were present, the appearance of the revolutionary 
lawyer was the signal for an outburst of public anger 
against him 

But royal disfavour and popular ill-will did not turn 
him from his purpose. 

To him royal personalities and social idols were 

absolutely of no interest — he never believed in them. 

# 
# # 

With a bravery at once unique and high-souled he 
lived andfought for the realization of a national dream, 
and he lived to see his dream a reality. 

He fought as a soldier in privations, as a revolutionary 
in contempt, as a political leader in glory. 

He was equally at home in the use of the sword and 
the pen. 

He was an excellent speaker but not a demagogue. 

109 



Brought up and trained in an atmosphere of Oriental 
intrigues, under the brutal and oppressive rule of the 
Sultans ; mixing with a people sharply divided in 
religious beliefs — Mohammedans and orthodox Greeks 
— and fanatical traditionary enemies ; a witness of and 
participator in many revolutionary movements, his 
political education, experience, and diplomatic training, 
prepared him for a high national mission. 



A bloodless revolution brought about by a few officers 
caused the fall of the Greek Government. 

The post for a national leader was vacant. The old 
leaders retired for the moment — a kind of leaders' strike 
— and the country was eagerly looking out for some one 
to lead. 

The excommunicated revolutionary lawyer came to the 
rescue — it was Eulentherios Venizelos ! 



In his new sphere Venizelos did not hesitate to continue 
his fight against the royal family, for therein he saw the 
centre of social and political contamination. 

The royal policy professed to represent a divine power 
— it sought to create a false aristocracy in this new and 
small nation. 

The king tried by all means to transport him, to 
absorb him, but Venizelos proved as steel in defending 
his opinions and asserting his policy, 



The foresight of Venizelos was like a prophecy for 
Greece. 

His policy was frankly pro-British, especially during 
the time when all the world believed in Germany's 
hegemony of the earth. 

He was misunderstood and described as England's 
agent. 

He was forced to face new fights, new intrigues, and 
new complications. 



The Greek intellectuals who had finished their 
education in Germany — and I was one of them — were 
very sceptical about his policy. 

# 

# # 

King George was a very clever and tricky king, and 
it must be said that such characteristics were of 
indispensable advantage to his reign in a new and 
small Oriental country. 

The first honest Governor of Greece, Kapod'Istria, 
who was well-known as Greek diplomat at the Russian 
Court, was assassinated by the Greeks ; and the first 
Greek king, the good Bavarian Otto, was dismissed by 
the people. 

King George succeeded in penetrating the Oriental 
Greek mentality. 

His last will in favour of his son Constantine was in 
the nature of a practical moral code of a king-father to 

his son ; but Constantine ignored this good advice. 

# 

# # 

Constantine, who was born in Greece, is a type of 
the stubborn oriental character, a mixture of Russia 
and Danish blood, and was educated in Germany, 

King George's policy was to keep Greece small and 
happy, counting on some promises from his royal relatives, 
who proved their fidelity both to him and to Greece in 
some very difficult moments. 

King George had a system of buying off every 
dangerous political leader by means of royal favours 
and a clever flattery of their vanities. 

He was a master in his way. 

He never believed in the idea of sacred traditions, or 
national aspirations and ideals. 

For him, Greece was a sort of royal property, and his 
interest was to keep her as she was, small. 
* 

# # 

In 1897, Greece lost her war against the Turks. 

Constantine returned from Germany, where he had 
completed his military education and assumed command 
of the defence of the Greek frontier in Thessalia. 



His defence was unsuccessful, and he was obliged to 
fly with his army in a panic before the victorious Turks, 
who immediately invaded Greece. 

Etem Pasha, the Turkish Generalissimo, became the 
terror of the Greek population. 

Though Greece's royal relations saved her and pro- 
cured for her a slice of the victor's property — the island 
of Creta — the Greek people lost confidence in their 
king, believing their defeat due to some royal trick. 

An attempt to assassinate the king failed. 

A propaganda in favour of the king now began, and a 
tour of the country was undertaken to rehabilitate the 
royal house in the people's favour. 

I was a child at this time, and we entertained one of 
the royal ladies-in-waiting in my home in Sparta. I 
remember being forced to cry " Vive le roi ! " 

* 
# # 

During the war of 1897 a General Smolensky was 
the only one who had a certain military success against 
the Turks. 

The reception of this glorious soldier was a real 
apotheosis. 

The people in exaggerated enthusiasm passed before 
the royal residence in order to provoke the king. 

The king was wise enough to ignore this outburst of 
popular feeling, and to keep out of reach of this danger- 
ous explosion of a hot blooded people, who pass as 
easily from one psychological state to another, as does 
the Greek climate in its changes. 



Smolensky was promoted by the king to the position 
of War Minister. 

The king soon pushed him into the political struggle, 
where a good, brave, honest soldier, without political 
experience, lost his nerves, became ridiculous, and 
finally passed into national disgrace and discredit, soiling 
his military glory in the dusty political coulisses. 

The royal policy, hitherto successful, failed before 
Venizelos. 



After the Balkan War, Venizelos supported King 
Constantine as a constitutional king, as a soldier king, 
but not as a political monarch, a despot and a tyrant. 

Venizelos wished for a constitutional king like the 
English king, and Greece as his real constitution. 

He was wise enough to see that a dressed dummy for 
military performances and parades is still a necessary 
evil, in order to stimulate the people's patriotic enthusiasm 
and national pride and ideals. 

He understood that the Greek people are not yet ripe 
for real political independence — a republic — national 
traditions and ideals, and Oriental fanaticism stand in 
the way. 

He tried to keep the king, but when the King forced 
the constitution he had him replaced by his son — a royal 



With Venizelos Greece is centuries ahead. 

During my military service in the Greek Army at the 
military school in Corfu, and afterwards in the 
regiment, the decomposition and disorganisation of the 
army was complete, Military discipline was an empty 
phrase. 

Under Venizelos the Greek Army was reorganised 
under French military instruction, and the Greek Navy 
under English naval supervision. 

Venizelos contributed to the success of the first 
Balkan War by forming the Balcanic Union, in order to 
fight successfully the Turks and Bulgars, and if the 
Allies had followed his advice the collapse of the Turks 
and Bulgars would have occurred during the first or 
second year of the war. 

# 

# # 

At the end of the first Balkan War King George was 
assassinated, and the glorious military achievements of 

Constantine coincided with his accession to the throne. 

* 

* # 

Venizelos displayed unusual will power and capacity 
in his social and political struggle to become a successful 

"3 



political leader, not a demagogue of the moment at the 
behest of a party, and promoted by money and propa- 
ganda. 

Venizelos is in truth a self-made political leader, a 
hard worker all his life, sober in social life, a man of 
high moral principles, a healthy politician. 

Venizelos set out on his political career with the 
ambition to overthrow false royal idols, which are now 
in pitiful bankruptcy. 

Venizelos is an initiator. 



II. 

In Great Britain we see a very similar evolution in 
the ex-lawyer and politician, Mr. Lloyd George, who 
fought with success against imperialistic Prussianism, 
and also in France, whose leader was Georges 
Clemenceau, a French ex-journalist. 

Both these statesmen have also fought the American 
golden autocracy, giving a lesson to the dictator President 
that if five years of ruthless war had for aim the 
destruction of Prussian militarism, whose principle was 
" Might is Right," there is, therefore, no necessity 
to-day for creating a gold autocracy with principle that 
" Right is the Might of the Gold." ' 

These three democratic statesmen, Venizelos, Lloyd 
George, and Clemenceau, displayed a swiftness of mind 
in political issues, rarely to be met with. 



We blame our European leaders unjustly. 

If we analyse their social and political life struggle 
we find these self-created political personalities accom- 
plishing in five years a progressive work for which 
humanity has struggled for centuries. 

These politicians, with their national and international 
political training and experience, caused the failure of the 
dictator President's policy. 

114 



Wilson was a domestic politician promoted to his 
position to serve the interests of a party, and quite 
incapable of holding his own against the European 
political leaders. 

# 

To-day, Europe is a poor-house, but free and 
independent, and no longer an aristocratic asylum, 
a Siberian prisoners' exile, a military arsenal, as before 
the war. 

# # 

We do not believe in the empty word genius, but we 
do believe in hard work and experience, which, combined 
with a practical intelligence, create the true political 
leader. 

# 

* * 

Europe believes in America's moral supremacy, 
in the American people as a free leading nation, and 
destined to be her promoter and organizer, but Europe 
believes no longer in the present American political 
leaders, who are unrepresentative of the American 
people's will, and are mere instruments of political parties 
managing political interests. 



WAR MORAL-WAR MENTALITY. 



From Kaiser to Wilson, 
i. 

It is a fatality that the happiness and peace of 
humanity depend upon a few leaders in each nation who 
dispose of the people's will and wealth. 

The President's policy was an hermaphrodite mis- 
carriage, a doctrine based on no practical, social, or 
moral principles. 

His failure began with his majestic speeches, in which 
he propounded his fourteen "points," or "impossibilities." 

The consequences which followed on the Kaiser's 
assertion of his divine right were no less disastrous than 
those brought about by the President's moral mission, 
which, instead of making the world safe for democracy 
has created a new autocratic gold menace which will lead 
to disaster for America. 

The discredited President now seeks to use the plight 
of Europe as a subject for advertising his demagogic 
programme in the coming presidential elections. 

But already he is being deserted by his most powerful 
friends, who are far-sighted enough to see that his 
incompetency and autocratic handling of the position 
at the Peace Conference are likely to make his return 
as President very problematic. 

The elementary principle of consideration for the rights 
of other nations was absolutely ignored in the President's 
political formulae. 

The President counted on an absolutism in his 
doctrines. 

# # 
The duty of a political leader, to whom power is 
entrusted by a nation, power of absolute dictatorship, 
is to study what can be practically done, especially in 
foreign matters. 

119 



Since the President was in office, both before and 
during the war, the failure of American foreign policy 

must be placed at his door. 

* 

# * 

The Kaiser and his gang are now busy trying to 
throw responsibility upon their people, upon their 
diplomats, or upon the people and leaders of other 
nations. 

In like manner the President, saluted in Europe as a 
saviour, and promoted to the position of a despot in his 
own country, now seeks a scapegoat to bear the 
ignominy of his own failure. 

The Kaiser and the President both failed with their 

huge impracticable plans. 

* 

# # 

The war was a gold mine for America, and the 
President's party knew this well. 

America traded with both sides, and although con- 
stantly provoked by Germany she pocketed the insults 
and the cash. 

America with such a leader as Roosevelt could have 
put a stop to the war from the commencement. 

Was not the France of Lafayette and 191 8 the same 
France in 1 870, when she was abandoned to the fury 
of the Prussians ? 

But at that time war was not a gold proposition. 

# 

# # 

Germany employed a system of military terror which 
united the civilised world against her, and the 
President's policy is no less a policy of terror — the 
terror of gold, which is also uniting the world against 
America. 

America to-day numbers among her population twenty 
thousand millionaires, twelve thousand of whom were 
created during the war by martyr's money. 

The Kaiser's policy was one of iron, the President's 
of gold. 

The Kaiser must be put on his trial not only because 
of his responsibility for the war horrors, but also for his 



cowardice in abandoning his country after having 
reduced her to a state of chaos, and fled with his gold. 

Who is responsible for the hunger and famine 
after the Armistice, and all the political social slaughter 
which is going on ? 

If war justify crime, peace does not. 

To-morrow the President will be obliged to face his 
countrymen and to explain away his failure. 

II. 

American citizens were solicited to sign the pro-war 
proclamations distributed by the war propaganda. 

This is what the will of the people means. 

After a few months the same constitutional citizens 
were drafted by force of conscription. 

This means liberty. 

Innocent non-American citizens were robbed of their 
property. 

Wall Street war promoters and golden war lords 
accumulated money on the blood of the people. 

This means equality and fraternity. 

# # 

Lese" majesty was a military crime which meant court 
martial and social degradation before death. 

To-day in America, Lese President means deportation 
by force if an opinion is expressed in public against the 
President. 

Before deportation the State collects the taxes from 
the deported. 

Such is American liberty ! 

* 

# # 

The President's policy was a double-faced one. 

The apostolic moral one and the Democratic Trade 
one with American Basic Trade interests, defended by 
such sophistic expressions as moral principles which, 
misused, became empty nonsense. 

Quite regardless whether the reason for America's 
entry into the war was determined by her fear of 



becoming Germany's next victim, and perhaps having 
to pay the final war bill, or out of pride lest she should 
be excluded from the new social and political reform 
following a victory by the Allies, America must be 
credited with a large share in the final and decisive 
victory. 



III. 

American citizens of to-day are fed with phrases. 
Uncle Sam in his panic lost his nerve, and closed his 
door behind him on Europe. 

In blood, desolation, agony and distress he abandoned 
Europe. 

In future, when he gazes on his Statue of Liberty, let 
him recall the crimes of his leaders against the people's 
rights and contrast such conduct with the pre-war 
American constitutional spirit and happiness. 

America, drained in this war slaughter, was obliged 
to learn the military step, which is for her to-day a 
necessity, and to-morrow will be a national ideal. 
Patriotic ambitions and national pride and all these 
attractive new ideals are keeping the war industries 
busy, and silent military preparedness is considered a 
necessary defensive policy in emergency. 

The uniform and the rifle transform the peaceful 
constitutional citizen into a Prussian warrior, with a life 
assurance as a death premium. 

And the pity of it — all these costly preparations are 
undertaken to protect the gold deposits of the newly- 
created gold tyrants. 

# # 

To-morrow, America will replace Germany, and Japan 
England. 

A new war for Trade supremacy somewhere on the 
Pacific Coast with new complicated problems. 

New moral slaughters for the standard ethical 
principles, where liberty, democracy, and all the old 



standard phraseology will promote new gold deposits, 
and the gold will be put in circulation again. 

Europe then will play her part as America did in this 
war, but upon more positive basis —business, and not 
morals. 

And the gold will come home by the same route 
by which it left according to the infallible law of 
circulation — the law of eternal return, upon which is 
based with mathematical precision the repetition of 
history. 

The human instincts of selfishness and crime are the 
same whether under the gilded uniform or the sombre 
garb, and death promoters pass into eternity with the 
same historical respect. 

Gold is the lodestone of crime, and around this yellow 
metal anarchy is at work. 

America must beware lest the theory of to-day become 
the fact for to-morrow. 

IV. 

The Rats desert a Sinking Ship. 

The political rats have already started to desert. 

In the over-advertised German atrocities, which were 
the motto of all the war propaganda throughout the 
world against Germany, the political rats were safe. 

All these old impressions have now vanished, and 
new ones have supplanted them in the human conscience, 
which is so capricious and elastic. 

The first to abandon the President was his son-in-law, 
who was Secretary of the Treasury Department. 

His letter to the President was a document full of 
irony for the American nation. 

He retired to his private business, pleading he could 
not make his living in his high official position. 

The Paris Peace Conference started with the 
Presidential theatrical trips and majestic receptions. 

There was constant friction between the President 
and Colonel House, and the President's relations with 

123 



Secretary of State, Lansing, were, to say the least* 
strained. 

The Senate went further and caused trouble by dis- 
cussing whether the presents received by the President 
while abroad, should or should not be considered his 
private property, or as gifts to the Government. 

Everything was discussed and criticized. 

The President was violating all constitutional traditions. 

While immortality, with open wings, beckoned the 
President to an international leadership, the political 
clouds were preparing to obscure his war glory. 

Political scandals, the Admiral Sims controversy, the 
Daniels affair, and finally, the resignation of the 
President's best and most faithful adviser, left no doubt 
as to the trend of affairs. 

This is the beginning of the end of a man in whom 
the nation placed unlimited confidence, in the form of a 
dictatorship, and which confidence he has misused. 

This happened to the Kaiser also. 

This proves once more, that regardless of any system 
of government, whether the ruler be an Emperor or a 
President, the instinct of egoism and brutal selfishness 
remains the same. 

The people are ever the last spectators of cruel political 
disasters, which force them to reflect seriously when it 
is too late. 

V. 

Golden Positivism and the Theory about 

Religion and Justice. 

Civilisation is the real anarchy of our animal instincts ; 
a brutal inspiration with false ideals created by a 
traditional physical and moral intoxication caused by 
the "trinity of meat,, alcohol, and nicotine." 

These extracted poisons, combined in our blood, 
produce the delirium of all our criminal conceptions. 

Humanity is physically intoxicated and morally 
helpless. 

124 



in GO(L)D WE TRUST. 




Peace can only come with Liberty, not while destinies are ruled by small selfish groups. — (Wilson 



Ill GO(L)D WE TRUST. 




Business must be founded on the truth, and you must get together in order to create 
clearing house of truth about your business. — (Wilson.) 



IM GO(L)D WE TRUST. 




Making the World Safe for Democracy.— (Wilson. 



God is dead in the human conscience. 

Ours is a degenerate humanity, always seeking 
stronger poisons and newer deliriums. 

The religion of peace and war religion. 
The justice of peace and war justice. 

On these two conventional contradictions is based our 
social life. 

The moral doctrine claims divine absolutism as 
principle, with blind faith in eternity. 

Justice compels a respect for legal obligations, life, 
and property, and where the moral doctrine does not 
interfere, religion starts. 

A part of our selfish instincts is thus left free for moral 
education, and around this part traditional ethical 
systems have been created with a rich vocabulary of 
empty phrases. 

The law imposes as obligations what religion imposes 
as a moral duty. 

Money is the most perfect of mankind's creations ; 
it satisfies the human egotistic instinct against which 
all moral and altruistic doctrines and religions fail. 

Money means property which is acquired by all means 
of Trade, whose basic principle is a contradiction of all 
moral and legal principles. 

War religion demolishes its own doctrines with a war- 
moral of crime and hate, and the altruistic divine 
doctrine of God becomes a criminal one when each 
nation in turn uses God as a divine protector, and 
apostles bless flags and cannon for the extermination of 
the enemy — our brothers. 

War crime becomes a new justice which arms 
humanity by force, and crime becomes a legal obligation. 
The principles of justice and peace are demolished. 
Justice and religion are the two traditional fundamental 
systems upon which is based our social existence. 
History is mankind's protocol in the form of tales which 
idealises both and transmits them to future generations. 



125 



VI. 

Internationalization of Labour. 

We witness the League of Nations in the course of 
formation and behind it is the same spirit of force and 
suppression which it professes to be about to set aside 
for ever ! 

The first step has been taken, so much so good. 

Only when Labour becomes inter-nationalized will 
the League of Nations prove to be an Utopia ; the 
League in the hands of its present promoters and with 
the voice of Labour disunited, will indeed prove as 
Dead Sea fruit. 

Labour, which has at heart the suppression of all wars ; 
Labour, which is in itself both military power and 
production, must, if it would save both itself and 
humanity, be internationalized. 

The labour of one nation must not take arms against 
comrades in other lands. 

Labour must see to it that it does not any more play 
into the hands of its masters by helping in the greatest 
of all trade speculations which is called war. 

Up to the present humanity has tried every political 
system. 

War in our day is no longer heroic as in the past. 

Modern war is a pure speculation. 

To-day, Europe is face to face with a menacing 
America, which three years ago was preaching 
democracy. 

America keeps her people in ignorance and feeds 
them on political lies and rosy promises ; excites them 
against her foreign competitors by all and every means ; 
subsidises a corrupt press with the people's money, for the 
benefit of a particular party, abuses the people's rights 
and keeps them in a state of suppression. 

126 



MIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF GOLD. 




Capital and Labour. 



By Kupka. 



This is the eternal demagogic game of the politician, 
who is obliged by the force of circumstances to serve 
the political gang which put him in power. 

This war has shown the futility of the so-called official 
treaties, and the Versailles Peace the impossibility of 
creating anything worth consideration in the nature of a 
permanent peace tribunal, since every national leader 
claims rights at the expense of others, and the personal 
ambitions and selfishness of the leaders do little more 
than create international troubles. 

If Anarchy be a danger, then Autocracy is still worse. 
To-day we see, quite regardless of the denomination of 
the political system, imperialistic or republican, royalist 
or democratic, constitutional or absolute, the basic 
principle of all is the autocratic instinct of the few who 
would suppress the many by force or by gold. 

Labour in every nation must join the movement and 
lay the foundations of a league where it will have the 
deciding voice. 



127 



VII. 
War Mentality. 

America has to deal now with an altered European 
War mentality, resulting from five years' strenuous war, 
and followed by chaotic conditions due to the failure of 
American foreign policy. 

If the resulting outlook be deemed a danger for 
Europe, it is no less a source of danger for America, 
despite her wealth and prosperity to-day. 

America must to-morrow face a domestic danger, 
that of her German population, and a second one of 
no less importance connected with the Irish question. 



The fighting forces in the war, regardless of their 
social standing, and considered as a productive element 
for each nation, must begin their work-a-day life anew, 
after having lost either their money or their capacity 
for work, their business or their families. 

They have been trained to a new morale, the morale 
of crime, a new religion, the religion of hate and 
egoism, a new profession, the infernal profession of the 
skilled murderer with all the scientific methods of killing 
and destroying, and with all the up-to-date machinery. 

The Government fed, dressed, armed and paid them 
with their own money. They plied them with super- 
morals and promises, extended to them the official 
protection of the law for their crimes, called in aid a 
religious system that blessed their flags and assured them 
of a protecting God while it taught in the name of that 
self-same God that '' we must not kill," promised a new 
condition of life in which heroic labour should be free 
from the slave conditions of pre-war days, flattered their 
dupes with empty titles, medals and crosses, used a 
press which can prove that black is white on occasion, 
and which believes in preaching to labour the virtue of 
waiting. 

128 



How patiently labour waits ! How it will never 
understand that its own red blood means yellow gold for 
its masters ; never understand that history in its 
attractive phraseology composes the eternal mosaic of 
lies and immortalities, the only shadows which create 
crazy Neros, murderous Napoleons, and Satanic Kaisers. 
Now, how can these perpetually fooled slaves believe 
again ? 

America was outside of this criminal atmosphere, and 
blindly tried to contaminate herself. 

The American Government followed the old European 
policy and adopted the principles of such policy for pro- 
war propaganda, the consequences of which the American 
nation will feel later. 

# # 

Deportations to-day mean social dismembrance, 
which, once started, will follow its nefast course. 

Before the war, the American Government protected 
the people's rights constitutionally. 

To-day it is trying to control the people's will by 
means of force which leads a nation, especially when 
composed of an international population, to a social 
and political dis-union. 

Each deported citizen is considered to-day as a social 
sacrifice, as a political martyr, by those people who 
distrust political leaders and Governments, and who 
feel that they have been victimised in the interests of 
gold. 

The one deported creates a thousand admirers and 
a hundred followers. 

The phalanx of the people's political heroes and 
martyrs is counted by thousands, and the Russian 

revolution gave us unquestionable proofs of this fact. 

* 

* # 

To-day labour in every land is awake, and quite united, 
though apparently disunited. 

The people's spirits and efforts are actuated by the 
same ideal, regardless of nationality or religion. 

America and Europe face each other to-day in a 
sullen mood. 

129 



The worker of to-day is in revolt. 

He is ready to defend his rights against his criminal 
masters by those same criminal methods taught him by 
force during the war. 

The day of responsibility is not far off. 

Recriminations are heard on all sides. 

In this atmosphere of mistrust the people are ready to 
follow any strong movement with promises of change 
of conditions, regardless if for better or worse. 

# ' # 

Universally blamed, criminal Germany which, but 
two years ago, menaced the entire world and defied 
America, even when she most needed America's aid, 
enjoys to-day the sympathy of the world, and is 
regarded as a nation sacrificed on the altar of liberty, 
while to-day it looks as if the Prussian mantle had 
descended on the shoulders of the United States, so 
despotic is the spirit of its rulers. 

To-day confidence is entirely lost between the social 
classes of every nation, and between the nations them- 
selves, whether Allied or enemy. 

Labour and capital are facing each other, and 
this mistrust is so strong between the Allies that 
America was compelled to retire from the attempt to 
solve those complicated problems — diplomatic and 
otherwise — and Russia with Lenin and Trotsky, is 
invited to-day officially to open its Trade with the 
European nations in order to equalise the European 
situation and avoid further complications. 

Russia's unlimited resources will be a large asset for 
Europe, whose principal aim is to cut off entirely American 
trade. 

To-morrow America will invite Russia, as America 
will invite Germany and Austria later on, and those 
financial wrecks despised by every nation will become 
the best of commercial assets, and a trading ground where 
American and European competition will have to meet 
each other. 

130 



After a military supremacy we see everywhere defeat, 
humiliation, increased risks and dangers, and the 
Bolshevist triumph is largely due to the mistrust of the 
Allies. 

To-morrow, Japan, which is playing the same game, 
fighting for democracy, will have its turn. 

The Far East will create new complications. 

In this political complication American foreign policy 
is lost. 

Her foreign policy is now but a political advertising 
game for the new elections. 

Afterwards the protocols — papers for which the 
Americans do not care — will be forgotten, and the war 
will remain as a national event which cost America 
several billions of dollars, and fifty thousand lives, for a 
disputed historical glory. 

# A * 

When American politics are settled and the prevailing 
normal conditions give the American people the right 
to ask their own Government, the trustees of their 
independence, some questions, they will be surprised 
to learn that this war was, for America, a pure money- 
making proposition engineered by a certain class of 
traders under a kind of moral prestige which turned out 
to be very tragical for Europe. 

Roosevelt's policy was an American and a patriotic 
one, while the American war policy was a purely 
democratic one. 

American politics are now mixed in the world's affairs. 
* 

We have witnessed the united efforts of the Allies' 
their pure and frank enthusiasm welcoming the American 
nation to join them in a brotherly spirit for a common 
cause and ready to unite their efforts for the creation of 
a new world for peace and universal happiness. 

We witnessed the inspiring answer of the American 
nation, "Lafayette, we come," to the Allies' call, and the 
sacrifices which the United States made, and were pre- 
pared to make, if this war had continued. 

131 



We witnessed this unbroken Allied union during the 
war, a union which brought victory. 

We are now witnessing an anti- Allied propaganda in 
America and an anti-American one in Europe. There 
is no reason to justify disunion among the peoples of 
the nations, no reason in discussing the sacrifices made 
by each, or of debating the question as to whom victory 
is to be attributed. 

This but dims the purity of the ideal which united 
them in the struggle. 

# ' # 

The victory belongs to all the Allies united, regardless 
of the amount of their individual contribution in blood, 
gold or capacity. 

In the critical moments each needed the support of 
the others whether moral, military, or financial, the 
danger for one was the danger for all. 

If France went under, England's turn would be next, 
and then America's. 

Now is the time to take advantage of the psychological 
moment, when the sacrificed people of all the fighting 
nations are asking themselves, for what have they fought. 

Now the danger is a new one, the danger of reaction. 



Anarchy is present undermining all the nations, 
This danger started with Russia and contaminated all 
the others — strikes, revolutions, and deportations are the 
obvious results. 

Regardless of how the people express their dis- 
satisfaction, it is evident that social troubles take a 
certain form according to the opportunity and possibility 
of each class, but the origin is the same, and it is called 
anarchy. 

* 
* * 

Scarcely had the war terminated and people begun 
to breathe freely after five years of unprecedented 
slaughter, before a new danger— the gold danger 
(exchange) appeared. 

132 



The menace of armed militarism is now replaced by a 
menace more hypocritical, which under a kind of moral 
prestige, begins where the other left off. 

Iron and fire were the Kaiser's menace — gold is the 
present American one. 

Metallic danger is humanity's fate. 

* ' # 

The American people to-day are as the Germans 
were before and during the war. 

They do not believe what is true, they accept political 
lies instead of truth. 

Constitutionally, America of to-day is no longer what 
it was before the war. 

The American policy is no longer based on the 
people's will. 

It is a man's will — a party's will, a man speculating 
upon war conditions, promoted himself to the position 
of a dictator, suppressed all initiative, all free thinking. 

The American people to-day drink what the President 
drinks, and to-morrow they will be made to feel that 
they have gone back to the period of slavery. 
# 

# * 

Political leaders outline a League of Nations in which 
the smaller nations shall play the role of slaves . 

But when the great powers who form the League 
inevitably quarrel among themselves, where then will be 
the peace tribunal to which they may appeal ? 

Already, before the League is created relations are 
strained. 

But while gold exists and Labour remains enslaved, 
and the idle social classes suck the blood of the workers, 
so long will war be a will-o'-the-wisp tempting with a 
promise of better things to come. 

We are incapable of penetrating the mystery of this 
eternal will of the creation which our statesmen hope to 
control with protocols, according to the interest and the 
will of a certain rich class. 

In the meantime Europe needs food and gold. 

This is the terrible reality which overfed masters 
overlook. 

i33 



VIII. 

America was supporting two wars — one on the battle- 
fields against an enemy created by her own policy, and 
the other against her own population, the strongest part 
of her honest and devoted citizens. 

The one war is over for her Allies, but not for herself. 

The second is a war which will hardly be stopped 
either by deportations or force. 

A social organisation in which large numbers are 
unjustly sacrificed by brute force and abuse of 
confidence, cannot be united. 

A false education effected by over-advertised " iies " 
with moral principles for a divine ideal that never 
existed will bring about America's downfall as it brought 
Germany's, unless a national leader, an American 
citizen, free from the contaminating atmosphere of 
official intrigue, and brought up outside the circle of 
degenerate officialdom, takes the power in his hands 
and cleans the country of this moral contamination, 
which a degenerated scholar's mentality brought to 
America. 

" Give me good citizens to create a good nation " 
must be his principle, and America is the only country 
of real good citizens. 

The President's policy was " Give me twenty 
thousand millionaires to impose my will and ruin good 
American citizens, so that I may become an inter- 
national leader." 

To-day Russia is free and preaches the sacred gospel 
of liberty to the nations. 

Germany is making ready to adopt a republican system. 

To-day America tries to play the role of the old auto- 
cratic Russia and militaristic Germany, and led astray by 
a false war pride, bids fair to tempt Japan to a trial of 
arms. 

Alas for the world made safe for democracy. 

When will the peoples see that they are mere pawns 
in this game of blood letting. 

i34 



Must they wait tjie coming of a Trotsky or a Lenin 
to tear the scales from their eyes and hurl the golden 
demagogues from their places ? 

IX. 

European influence on American Trade mentality was 
disastrous. 

It was a sort of moral empoisonment with intrigues 
and proceedings till then unknown to American Trade. 

False reports and statements from the Foreign Secret 
Service caused the ruin of many American and foreign 
merchants. 

New York was the centre for all the European under- 
world Traders during the war whose genealogical 
influence gave them the right to obtain official recom- 
mendations and diplomatic passports. 

I know of a concern victimized to the extent of 
several hundred thousand dollars by a Trade Emissary 
who succeeded in obtaining an official letter from some 
Allied High Commission confirming that he was on an 
official mission in the United States buying for his 
Government. 

When the fraud was discovered it was too late to save 
the situation. 

American official circles knew by experience some- 
thing of the so-called Allied High Commissions and the 
important role which the nationalities were playing 
during the war. 

Patriotism was a word used by all speculators for every 
purpose with the Allied nationalities. 

The discipline of the American war organisations was 
so degenerated by the influence of the European official 
services that American Trade was quite under foreign 
control. 

Many American officials representing the healthy 
American element were disgusted and revolted, but in 
vain — the contamination had already started slowly but 
firmly, and now America resents its effects. 

i35 



FROM MY DIARY, 1914-1920. 



America in 1915. 
i. 

In 1915, the war opportunities were large. 

Every intelligent American was making money. 

America was a real international bazaar — an auction, 
where all the nations were buying at any price. 

American goods were solicited everywhere. 

Gold was knocking at traders' doors. 

Now the conditions are changed and American goods 
are soliciting buyers who have reason to be sceptical 
about them. 

Export at that time was a mania. 

Every concern, regardless of its importance or its 
business, created an export department 

Export managers were self-made. 

* 

* # 

It is a pity that this newly-born business ambition was 
not protected and properly organised by the Government. 

It was surprising to see so many American exporters 
making their geographical training by means of their 
foreign banking credits and correspondence, not knowing 
the names of the principal European ports and towns. 

* 

* * 

My first business connection was a young honest Jew, 
a whiskey dealer, named Joseph Simon. 

He also abandoned his domestic business and was 
drawn into the export whirlpool. 

Maybe he has forgotten me, though he transacted 
some thousands of dollars' worth of business through me. 

He helped me, however, with much good advice, and 
I copy a few of his observations. 

I was on the point of launching my commercial 
publication " Emporion," and on my business card I had 
printed, in addition to my name and address, my 
European scholarship titles. 

J 39 



" It is not businesslike," said he, " you are here to 
make money, aren't you ? Then be a business man and 
take these monkey titles away. A plain card with your 
name is enough. We do not care so much for titles 
here." 

This was sound advice from a practical man, and led 
my first steps into the practical business way. 

# 

# # 

One day I received in my office a visit of a European 
count, who bought a large quantity of glucose from me. 
He wore a monocle. 

My American stenographer, impressed by his, as she 
called it "monkey dressing" and his moustache, asked 
me " what kind of furniture has he in his eye ? " 

These little things made a strong impression on me 
and showed a sound conception of life. 

Later on, over some shipment, I met the manager of 
a commercial bank. 

I used my European style of vocabulary and ex- 
pressions, which are for Americans vague phraseology 
without commercial sense. 

" Honesty in business," he answered me coolly, "is an 
imperishable capital. Be practical and be honest, not 
considering honesty as a moral moon doctrine, but as a 
business proposition. It does not pay to be dishonest in 
business. It is as much a business interest to be honest 

as it is to make money." 

# 

# # 

On the steamer on my way to New York I met an 
American merchant, if I am not mistaken, a Jew coming 
back from Russia. 

His remarks on the situation in Europe were as 
follows : 

" Big troubles next. 

" Gentiles in Europe are not business men. 

•' They are fooling all of us. 

" Russia is to-day ruined, and will break down. 
Everything the Gentiles did to the Jews they will pay. 
The Jews are hard workers. 

140 



" They know what economy and business mean. 

" Politics they do not care about. But this world is 
no good as it is now. 

" Everywhere are spies, intrigue, diplomacy, and 
may the Almighty save America and keep her out of 
this hell." 

When I asked him his opinion as to how I could start 
business in New York, confessing to him my situation, 
he told me. 

" Sell. If you cannot buy and re-sell, sell everything 
you find — newspapers, peanuts, etc., and when you 
make a few dollars start producing something by your- 
self in order to make more money selling. 

"But sell. 

" There are buyers for everything in America. 

" Do not fool around with rainbow chasing as 
Europeans are doing. 

" Avoid becoming an employee because you can make 

more and be free." 

* 
* * 

My first impression on entering the port of New York 
was discouraging. 

Everywhere huge buildings, with their smoking 
chimneys adding to the gloom of a dark wintry day. 

Glaring electric lights stabbing the darkness with their 
steel-blue shafts and disclosing a harbour, cold and un- 
inviting — a chilling prospect in truth ! 

I began to regret having taken such a stupid decision 
as to come to this world so far away from my home, 
without anyone to receive me. 

How I envied those passengers awaited by relatives 
and friends, to whom their homecoming brought joy 
and happiness. 

The old American merchant read my impressions in 
my eyes. 

He came to me, and holding me by the hand, bade 
me "Good-luck," saying "my boy, do not worry. 
America is a big and good country if you start right. 
Do not forget — sell. Go to-morrow and buy newspapers 
and sell them." 

141 



All my capital was three dollars seventy-five. 

My struggle started. 

The old Jew's advice guided my steps and I did not 
fail. 

My four years' business struggle was at the same 
time a real struggle against my own mentality, my own 
education, my own scholarship, with University diplomas 
and scientific encyclopaedic training which I had to 
control in order not to hamper my way in my practical 
business. 

In Europe we have the key of knowledge and we 
cannot use it ourselves- 

I met many Europeans in America occupying official 
positions, who found everything American as no good, 
who regarded the American people as vulgar, uneducated, 
unrefined and uncivilized. 

These are blindfolded by their self- ignorance. 

One day I called to see the President of a large 
American car company. 

He complained to me how impertinent the officials of 
Allied High Commissions were. 

" In Europe we are making the cars so-and-so. In 
Europe we are making the wheels so-and-so. In Europe 
we are making the axles so and so, etc." 

His American answer to them was, 

" Here you are, gentlemen, in America. We are here 
not to discuss how you make your cars — our American 

cars are as they are. Now it is up to you to decide." 

* 
# # 

Germany succeeded by her blunders in sacrificing her 
huge German- American population, bluffing them 
continuously. 

One day I saw a crowd of Germans dining in the 
Luchov's Restaurant, celebrating the sinking of the 
Lusitania. 

This stupid policy I thought would finish Germany. 

Wall Street was too strong for the Wilhelmstrasse ! 

142 



In an ignorant mentality there is always space for a 
new ideal, and this false war ideal was cleverly created 
by the force of gold. 

I regretted to see American policy steeped in lies. 
To see on all sides spies and secret services, intrigues, 
abuse of the peoples' right, profiteering upon the 
innocent victimized alien population, autocrats 
suppressing and ruining the life-business of honest 
citizens, blackmailing honest people and reserving 
rights and privileges to one class of gold autocrats, 
created especially to carry on the war policy. 
# 

* * 

I was disgusted one day to be called before the 
officials of the Intelligence Department because I was 
connected with a concern, the president of which, though 
of German origin, is one of the best and most upright of 
American citizens, of whom America may well be proud. 

I have seen thousands of dollars' worth of my cables 
thrown in the waste paper basket because they were 
hurting the interests of other privileged competitors. 

I have seen official permissions granted and cancelled 
a few days after. 

I have personally experienced, in hundreds of thousands 
dollars' worth of transactions, the real blunders of the 
United States Government, with its war created services, 
its United States' Shipping Board, Emergency Fleet 
Corporation, Chartering Committee, War Trade Board, 
Food Administration, etc., etc., where privileges were 
reserved for a certain class of traders whose employees 
offered their services voluntarily to help the United 
States Government in the newly organized official Trade 
services ! 

I have seen the undermining American Trade official 

policy and the unscrupulous work approaching anarchy. 

* 

# * 

Government propaganda was so effective and in such 
a short time. 

It was due in a great measure to the fact that the 
American people are essentially non-reading and unre- 
flective. 

»43 



The real public education is effected by means of 
advertising. 

In America advertising is quite a science, a psycho- 
logical power, whose effects are surprising. 

Advertising is the application of almost every art and 
every theory to practical business methods. 

What was this war if not a business proposition for 
America. 

In the application of these advertising methods lay the 
success of the Government's war propaganda. 
# 

* # 

This war period was a dark and unlucky one for the 
United States ; it must be forgotten. 

He who will one day write the political history of the 
United States will have to pass over in silence many 
happenings during this period which, if known to the 
American people, would tax all the official powers to 
avoid internal political troubles. 

1915—1919. 

II. 

To arrive in New York with a few dollars in hand, 
and within two and-a-half years to succeed in penetrating 
the golden zone, that financial stronghold called Wall 
Street, and handle over ten million dollars worth of 
business is not an easy matter. 

* 

# * 

Suggested plans to bridge the ocean, to turn out a 
steamer a day and many others of a similar character, 
both daring and original, fired my imagination and 
inspired me with a longing to do something big. 

But it needs money to make money, and that was 
the cold reality of the position. 
* 

From my first almost empty office, for which I paid 
the modest rent of three dollars a week, I gained that 
inspiration, which comes to so few when things are 
darkest, and which helped me to win through. 

144 



Insignificant as my rent may seem I was obliged to 
pawn some treasures of bygone glorious days in order 
to meet it. 

I dared not indulge in the luxury of gas or electricity, 
and when evening came I worked as best I could by 
means of the light deflected from some snow accumu- 
lated on my window-sill, which faced a small dark court, 
and as for steam heat, well, I had to imagine its presence. 

Yet I toiled on and dreamt my dreams. 

But many dreams become realities where will power, 
faith, and hard work are employed. 



III. 

My first impressions about New York were not as I 
anticipated they would be. 

In Europe one is accustomed to cities where every- 
thing, if on a small scale, is at least artistic in concep- 
tion, whereas in New York and other large American 
cities, the basic aim being that of utility, one's sense of 
the artistic is hurt by what it sees on all sides. . 

The sky-scraper building haunts one's imagination 
like a nightmare. 

I liked America before her war complications. 

I liked her for her unrestricted freedom, for her free 
trade, for her brotherhood between all her classes and 
nationalities, for her religious tolerance, for her open- 
handed citizens. How varied and interesting were her 
many races. 

In a city where your grocer is a Jew, your bootblack 
an Italian, your fruiterer a Greek, your baker a German, 
and your butcher an Irishman, there is no need to feel 
that you are an exile, and if I refer lastly to the good 
hearted genuine American, be he democrat or re- 
publican, who fulfils his obligations as cheerfully as he 
receives his profits, and conducts himself in every 
respect as an honest constitutional citizen, it is not 
because he is least in my esteem, but rather in order to 
place him in my climax in the position of honour — on top ! 

i45 



Patience, observation and economy are the only 
privileges of our race. 

My curiosity prompted me to penetrate the American 
mentality, as I remarked that the greater proportion of 
the foreign elements did not make any headway, being 
separated from the American world, although in America. 

They live their European life, conserving their funda- 
mental principles and working only because they are 
obliged to work. 

The only way to understand a people's point of view 
in life is to struggle in business with them. 

Business may be defined as any pursuit in life the 
principal aim of which is to make money. 

In America his majesty Gold is absolutely deified. 

# # 

Mistrust of everything foreign is a traditional principle 
in America. 

Foreign nations before the war were represented mostly 
by this class of adventurous emigrants, whose last 
resource was America, and who, without doubt, are the 

largest contributors to America's wealth and power. 

# 

* * 

Strict economy, approaching privation and hard work, 
is the beginning of the emigrants' business career. 
Peanuts, fruits, candy, newspapers, and those other 
commodities required by the public are the usual stock- 
in-trade with which so many emigrants make a start, 
and in the sale of which they are exposed to extreme 
cold in winter, and in the summer time to an 
asphyxiating hot atmosphere. 

The emigrants also supply the labour for the 
mines, the railroads, and factories. 

The first small capital saved by time and patience is 
employed in taking a shop, and so enlarging the cities. 

This foreign population lives on the border-line of 
American society, and it seems strange that Americans 
have not learned from them a lesson in patience. 

The hard working tasks are reserved for the emigrants, 
and America in pre-war days was considered by the 
European as an emigrant country. 
146 



A few days after my arrival I heard that a certain 

Mr. X , who some years previously was a European 

social wreck and professional vagabond, was now making 
good in millionaire circles, and enjoying a reputation for 
honesty and capacity. 

I met him subsequently, and was surprised to see 
he was physically unchanged, and glad to discover from 
his conversation that his moral principles were those of 
a real honest American worker. 

I found all his friends knew of his past, but were only 
interested in his present. 

So the cowboy becomes a shipbuilder, and the pea-nut 
dealer a banker. 

Wonderful America ! 

The origin of most American millionaires has been 
very humble. 

But to the poorest the door is open if he is made of 
the right stuff. 



The War, alas ! came, and in its train followed all the 
well-known evils of such a condition. 

Owing to the various nationalities which go to make 
up the citizens of the United States, war had a peculiarly 
distressing effect by dividing the peoples whose sympa- 
thies were naturally with their homelands in Europe. 

Let us hope these dissensions will pass with time and 
that America may soon regain her pre-war health, union, 
and domestic happiness. 

A large part of the foreign populations in the States 
never anticipated war. Had they not in most instances 
come to America to escape the desolating conditions of 
European conscription ? 

But gold will do most things, and the people's con- 
science was bought. Inducements of all kinds were 
offered, heavy premiums and big salaries, later on ex- 
tracted from the workers and replaced by Liberty Bonds. 

The people felt themselves rich and consequently 
happy. The soldiers were well paid and fed. 

HI 



Heroic France, and Paris especially, acted as a lure, 
and the flag did the rest! 

To-morrow taxes and the other tolls of war will wake 
the people to the terrible reality. 

A new government will essay to better conditions, 
and to satisfy the people with new schemes in which 
once more the people will be the social martyrs. 

IV. 

Business and Social Principles of the 
Old-Fashioned World. 

It is indisputable that American principles of handling 
business and American social principles of life, the one 
closely connected with the other, show a mental alert- 
ness and a progressive temperament centuries ahead of 
the old-fashioned European outlook on affairs. 

It is also a fact that the aggressive attitude which the 
Americans are taking, and the methods which they are 
employing in order to impose on the European people, 
the adoption of their new social and business principles, 
and to educate them in the real up-to-date methods, 

are responsible for their failure. 

# 
# * 

Business-like is an American expression which 
means nothing to Europeans. 

European education in the American business ways 
started, properly speaking, during the War period when 
European Trade was compelled to accept everything 
which was imposed upon it. 

To-day we are facing a misunderstanding between 
American and European Trade in the matter of business 
customs and procedure, and it is necessary for both 
sides to come to an understanding. 

American Trade has to gain European confidence, 
and having done so the difficulty of inducing Europe 
to accept her excellent business principles will not be so 
formidable. 

148 



American Trade must take this initiative and prove to 
the European Trade the misleading reasons of such 
misunderstandings, and become its Trade educator and 
its promoter. 

Europe to-day is open to America, but America is 

unconsciously closing the door. 

# 

# # 

It is an opportunity for the Trade leaders now to unite 
the American and European continents in Trade, as 
the political leaders united both continents in War. 
Where the mission of the political leaders ceases, the 
r6le of the Trade leader starts, but it is unfortunate that 
the political leaders of both sides, who controlled 
Trade during the War with unlimited power, now seek 
to impose their control in purely commercial affairs. 

# # 

Politics are the traditional negative poll of Trade. 
Though the European is now opposing a stubborn 
resistance to American influence, a big evolution is 
going on in the European mind, thirsty for reform. 
This evolution is slow, but sure. 

English mentality approximates most nearly to the 
American, and next in order to the German. 

England is destined to play an important role in this 

European reform. 

* 

If many American business promoters failed on the 
continent this is due to their having made a wrong 
start, by adopting American methods, which though 
good enough for the trained American business 
mentality, are yet regarded by Europeans with mistrust. 
It is natural to expect that plans and business concep- 
tions on a huge scale so natural to Americans should 
be misinterpreted by the European whose purview of 
affairs is by contrast very narrow. 
# 

# # 

The American business men returning home from 
their business trip around Europe are disappointed, and 
depressed, at not having found any possibilities of 

149 



handling business with Europeans, whom they find 
slow, undecided, and equivocal, apt to lose time with 
discussions, arguments, papers, etc., and keen on com- 
plicated propositions, which the plain and young 
American mentality cannot digest. 

My friend, Mr. Terhune, who is an American 
business man of great experience, visited many 
European commercial centres soon after the Armistice, 
and arrived in London exhausted and depressed, en 
route to New York. 

Mr. Terhune's experience, which is the experience of all 
American business men, is summed up in his somewhat 
laconic phraseology, e.g., They are not businesslike — 
propositions too devious — too complicated for us — / do not 

see any business at all; only propositions — I am 

fatigued, and I am going home to rest. 

Certainly life is too short for such business troubles, 
but they must be faced and the mission of the American 
nation to-day is to overcome these first difficulties, as 
every beginning is always difficult. 



On the continent it was — and is still — an insult to 
suggest any changes to an old-established concern, not 
only in the principles of handling business, but also in 
office improvements, working methods, applied common- 
sense in the saving of time, money, health, etc., and we 
witness every day the big difficulties which American 
pioneers find in introducing new practical things and 
ideas. 

Even the typewriter was not considered a serious 
medium of correspondence up to a few years ago, 
to-day in old-fashioned solicitors' offices, and amongst 
some other business classes it is looked upon as an insult 
to a client to send him a typewritten communication. 

Furthermore, in several old administrations the 
traditions are respected to such an extent that even 
taking away the dust or removing the piles of worm- 
eaten files accumulated for centuries, or giving to the 

i5° 



office an appearance of cleanliness is considered a 
sacrilege. 

Time is money, is an empty phrase for the slow and 
unprogressive European. 

These old-world principles are dying slowly ; America 
is destined to replace them with her new principles, 
which are the factors of the New World's strength 
and progress. 

# 
# # 

The old-fashioned idea of self-respect and the 
traditional glories, which claim to have brought about 
so-called European civilization are largely responsible for 
this attitude so unresponsive to progressive ideas. 
But, stern reality obliges us, in the light of recent 
happenings, to question the reality of a civilization 
which has shown itself the very negation of all that 
may be termed civilised. 

Europe is the victim of its self- ignorance, which is 
responsible for its downfall. 

Respect is due to the Old World, and America owes 
this respect to Europe more than any other nation on 
earth. 



VI. 

Another factor which has contributed greatly to the 
American progress is the free education and real eman- 
cipation of women, not only in social life, but also in 
business life. 

Even to-day women are considered in Europe either as 
slaves or as bearers of children. 

The woman is obliged to be productive in some way 
for the man, and though certain leading women are 
inspired by high principles and passionately strive for 
emancipation, their extremism nullifies their efforts to a 
large extent, and their progress makes little headway. 

Respect for women, which is so strong and innate in 
the American people does not exist at all in Europe, 
where the woman is a social victim. 

151 



In nations where one of the contributing social 
elements is not respected or is the victim of the other, 
though its contribution in life is equally important, the 
nation is condemned to go backwards. 

The War emancipated to some extent European 
women, who proved to be a business factor of great 
value, and whose services in various industries were 
recognized by those in a position to judge. 

Now, it is up to the leaders of the women's cause, not 
to allow the effects of this emancipation to die out, but 
to insist on a proper practical system of education which 
will ensure lasting reform and will place women in their 
due social position. 

In this reform America has to play a great role. 

Its mission in this respect is as important as the 
others, and maybe, more so. 



VII. 

The real practical education of the youth, as it exists in 
America, is replaced in Europe by the scholastic classical 
education by which the youth becomes a real wreck, 
neglecting his physical training in order to cram his mind 
with a literary pabulum too heavy to be digested, with 
the inevitable result that at the end of his so-called 
classical education he is ignorant of everything that 
matters, and quite helpless in the affairs of practical life. 

And while the American youth, regardless of his social 
position, makes an early start in practical life and works 
with system in accordance with his own initiative and 
capacity, not neglecting the most important part of his 
human duty, his health, the European youth starts to 
work very late in life, after having abused all the seduc- 
tive pleasures offered him by a wrong social system 
which obliges him to work only when the family protec- 
tion ceases, or when he is at the extreme end of his 
resources. 

Except in Germany, the European youth is greatly 
dependent upon his parents. 

152 



The individual working contribution in Europe is 
disproportionate to the individual life period. 

While an American has a daily normal occupation 
which follows its regular course until an advanced age, 
the European business man, if he starts working early, 
retires after having accumulated sufficient for the balance 
of his life, and retires at an age when his experience 
would be most useful to society ; or if he starts too late, 
he is working like a slave until he grows old. 

The ambition to perpetuate and develop business on 
a large scale passing from father to son, or a large 
associated business, is not so general in Europe where 
very often prosperous businesses die out with the death 
of their creator, or pass into the hands of worthless 
descendants or associates. 

This is largely due to the false ambitions and ideals 
of the parents who sacrifice their sons, by forcing them 
to spend the best years of their lives in scholastic 
education, considering practical education worthless 
from the social viewpoint. 
*- 
* # 

American scholars and literary youths knew but one 
side of European life previous to the war, and now is 
the turn of the American business youth to study 
thoroughly the conditions of their European confreres, not 
simply in order to take a pride in their own superiority, 
but in order to contribute something to the business 
education of Europe. 



VIII. 

Another point which is characteristic of the European 
Trade, and which Americans find difficult to understand, 
is the difference in social and business life, and the 
traditions which give privileges and rights to certain 
rich, or aristocratic, classes, to be used by them to stifle 
initiative and capacity, and so close the way to the 
uplifting of the lower classes. 

i53 



One rarely meets on the European Continent the 
prototype of the self-made American business man. 

This traditional barbed wire which divides the 
European commercial classes, is one of the serious 
causes which tend to keep Europe in a state of com- 
mercial stagnation. 

How many self-made American business men, former 
European social slaves, owe their position and wealth 
to the free social and commercial opportunities offered 
them in the land of their adoption ? How many 
European social wrecks, doomed to prison in their home 
land, have braced themselves in the free air of America 
and become good and honest citizens ? 

* a 

# # 

While descendants of rich families or titled aristocrats 
educated in opulence and luxury, not knowing the 
meaning of the term "struggle for life," or the making of 
money, inherit from their parents with their fortunes 
the right to keep their social rank and aristocratic 
privileges. 

But when these rich descendants lose their money, 
being incapable for work, they frequently join the army 
of ne'er-do-wells who live on the margin of society, and 
use their social connections to help them in some easy 
money- making profession where women are their tools, 
and where they feel no sense of shame in accepting 
support from such women. 

# * 

The social privileges reserved to the aristocratic or rich 
classes, give the right to a nobleman to ask a heavy 
price from his wife if she happens to belong to a rich 
middle-class family, bitten with the foolish ambition to 
penetrate into the so-called aristocratic sphere. In this 
way American snobbishness has often paid very dearly 
for European titles, which are somewhat cheap in the 
market to-day. 

In Europe an employee who dared to seat himself in 
an expensive restaurant at a table in close proximity to 
his boss, or ventured to sit beside him in a theatre, 

r 54 



would be considered either extravagant or a megalo- 
maniac, while in America employees are to be seen 
sharing in the social entertainments of their employers. 

* ' # 

These old-fashioned traditional principles will be 
abolished by a social revolution which has already begun 
in Russia, where the barbed wire dividing the social 
classes was almost impassable. 

Europe will not escape such a social revolution, and 
Might starts to be the Right of the people. 

The old game so cleverly employed in ancient Rome 
by the Patricians of keeping in restraint by means of 
wars the power of the people, is now being employed by 
those who owe their powers to the people alone. 

* « 

Europe still maintains the barbaric tradition which 
compels a poor girl, regardless of her physical or moral 
advantages to forego her natural role of married life if 
she is unable to pay the slavery tax — a mystically 
termed dot, and the honest, intelligent, hard-working 
young man dare not hope to marry the daughter of a 
family better placed than his own, if the family fortune 
of the former permits of the purchase of a nobleman. 

# 

* * 

The social revolution of to-morrow will destroy for 
ever the despotic criminal social classes who have created 
for centuries a social life by themselves and for them- 
selves, with attractive social combinations and conven- 
tional values, in which they reserve to themselves the 
exclusive privileges and rights of monopolising the 
national wealth, the people being kept in darkness and 
misery, in starvation and agony, working in conditions 
of slavery in order to keep on their shoulders this 
beautiful heaven of their criminal masters. The 
American people must control their despotic masters who 
are trying to imitate the old Roman Patricians while the 
European nations are trying to get rid of them. 



i5S 



IX. 
Pan-Americanism. 

The ancient Greeks, proud of their nationality, con- 
sidered everyone not a Greek as a barbarian. 
Alexandrine, Roman and Byzantine empires disappeared 
owing to false and exaggerated national ambitions and 
pride. 

The fate of Napoleon and the Kaiser was in no 
wise different. 

Up to the present the British policy has proved itself 
to be the only practical international policy which never 
claimed supremacy by means of force. 

She keeps in the background her offensive power. 

Trade is the guiding principle of English policy. 

National prejudices lead inevitably to a catastrophe, 
and prejudices are opinions without judgment. 

Americanism is sufficient — it means a certain 
supremacy, and it is up to the American people to keep 
this supremacy intact. 

Pan- Americanism is the beginning of the end ! 

Pan-Germanism ruined Germany. 



X. 
Marriage. 

I met one day an old comrade and fellow student, J.C., 
with whom I spent many happy days when we were 
both University students in Berlin. 

With him was his wife, a charming and clever Polish 
lady, in whom I also recognised a fellow student. 

Dear bygone days when life seemed so full of hope 
and promise ! 

My friend, like myself, had abandoned a literary 
career, and is now a practical business man, 

I compared notes as regards American life, and he 
agreed with my views in the main. 

156 



My friend, who is an American, has travelled the 
world, and speaks many languages fluently. 

He is one of the very few Americans I have met 
who thoroughly understands European life and mentality. 

I quote some of his remarks on the interesting 
subject of marriages in Europe and America. 
"Marriage," said he, "is Europe's moral downfall. 
Marriage, as practised in Europe, is the fatal union of 
two free persons who self condemn one another to a 
life long slavery and unhappiness — it begins either as 
an ideal or as a business proposition, and terminates 
in an early tragedy. 

" Europeans ask too much — they are idealising things, 
and disappointment follows — they soon tire of things — 
they are born old and abuse life early. 

" We Americans are young, and we try to keep young. 

" We consider our wives as living toys who have every 
right to be protected, to be treated properly and to be 
happy. 

" While Europeans are complicating things with a 
degenerate romanticism, being either poets or realists, 
are asking for perfection, they are being continually 
deceived, and though they are aware of all this they 
continue their traditions. Europeans are wanting in 
self-control, and are physically and mentally degenerate. 

" See our watering places in summer, crowded with 
youths of both sexes in physical training : no mystery 
in their bodies, which is for the European a luxury 
and an idol. 

" Europeans consider nature as a danger — they are 
afraid of it ! " 

I saw that my friend was right. The American may 
be compared with the old Dorian life, in style, in con- 
ception, in morals, and in life and work. 

The number of divorces in America is large. 
Marriage is considered as a social connection — an 
experiment for a life companionship. 

If one of the parties try to enslave or speculate upon 
the other then it is easy to get a divorce. 

*57 



During my second return trip to the Continent I met 
many French brides returning to their families. 

Curious as to this I asked one of them her reason. 

"American husbands," she said, "maybe too good 
for me, they are free, happy, healthy, generous, fond of 
sport, but their standard of life offers no social excite- 
ments. 

" They respect women too much, and it made me 
feel too old to be respected so. 

"Wives in America are not made to feel their 
husband's control, everyone lives his or her own life. 

" Their tasteless cooking and their wild music made 
me nervous, etc., etc." 

European women must be made to suffer and feel 
miserable in order to be content — they are as slaves 
who feel the necessity of man's strong control. 



XI. 



United Kingdom in 1915, and United States 
in 1918. 

En route to New York I stayed in London for about 
a year. 

At that time London was crowded with Americans, 
who were there arranging for their European business. 

The City knows a thing or two about these American 
transactions ! 

England's gigantic efforts to meet all her war require- 
ments, and a great part of that of her Allies, imposed a 
very severe strain on her resources, but her intelligent 
Trade control, and her assiduous nursing of her key 
industries, enabled her, on the announcement of the 
Armistice, to take up at once the threads of her foreign 
and domestic Trade. 

English governmental policy showed itself to be 
protective of British Trade interests, whilst American 
policy was most destructive for American Trade. 

158 



I witnessed the mobilization propaganda in England 
and admired the firm and decided attitude of the people 
and their resolve for a war a I'outrance. 

This attitude has won them the supremacy of the 
Continent, and to-morrow will win them the world's 
supremacy. 

While in the French army and French political circles 
there were found numerous traitors, in the English army 
and in English political circles the number was exceed- 
ingly small, a significant fact when one considers that 
the British Army and British official life numbered in 
their ranks soldiers and officials from almost every 
country under the sun. 

* 

# # 

We arranged to sail by the steamer Saxonia, but 
found at the last moment that this steamer had been 
unexpectedly requisitioned by the authorities for service 
in the Dardanelles. 

As a consequence the passengers were obliged to spend 
several days in Liverpool awaiting another steamer. 
The shipping company showed an excellent appreciation 
of our disappointment by arranging, at their own 
expense, accommodation at first class hotels, and allowing 
a daily cost indemnity for our loss of time, etc. 

We sailed at length in the s.s. Cameronia and 
experienced our first war thrill on finding ourselves in a 
submarine nest in the Irish Sea, on a night which was 
exceptionally dark. 

Our steamer carried a large amount of gold for the 
United States, and amongst the passengers was the 
English detective chief to whom later the American 
government handed over a well-known political person- 
age, afterwards executed at the Tower of London as a 
spy. 

# 

# * 

I also admired very much the English officials' tactful 
but firm discharge of the new duties imposed by the 
war, and his utter disregard for the social rank of the 
offender. 

*59 



In this connection I witnessed at Liverpool the 
discomfiture of an attache of the Russian Embassy, 
who wished to go aboard a steamer and who failed to 
procure his necessary papers in conformity with the 
regulations of the moment. 

" Where are your papers, sir ? " demanded the police- 
man on duty. 

" I am a Russian diplomat ! " the attache replied, with 
an air of offended dignity. 

"That makes no difference whatever," replied the 
policeman, " bring your papers with you the next time 
you come here." 

All foreigners in England were being treated impar- 
tially and without any reference to their religion or 
nationality. 

* 

# # 

En voyage, I often marvelled in reverie, at the kindly 
treatment I saw meted out to the Germans in England, 
and later I could not help contrasting the methods 
employed by the American Government when America 
entered the war. 

In the one case consideration pushed to extremes, 
perhaps, in the other, harshness and absolute persecution. 

My friend Mr. Coyne, barrister-at-law, with whom I 
passed many pleasant days, in his ideal home in 
Hampstead, had in his service two men servants, the 
one a German, the other a Bohemian, for quite twelve 
months following the outbreak of hostilities, and in 
business circles I met very many German and Austrian 
merchants pursuing their different avocations without 
let or hindrance. 

The London branch of the Deutsche Bank had its 
doors still open and German book shops carried on as 

usual. 

# 

* # 

On the outbreak of war all the Maggi shops in Paris, 
which were supposed to be controlled by Germans, 
were wrecked by the French populace, and many 
non-Germans were arrested and wrongly imprisoned. 

1 60 



Later on, in the United States, I witnessed the very- 
unjust treatment of innocent German-American citizens, 
whose fortunes were confiscated and whose properties 
were filched from them. 

To England must be given the palm for her treatment 
of her enemies. 

War was to England a question of Trade competition, 
which Germany started and. carried through with force 
and capacity. 

But the war once over England quickly forgot all 
about it, started to Trade at once with her quondam 
enemy, sent official delegates to Germany, and acted 
as she does in every respect to a friendly nation. 

The fact that Germany was one of England's best 
customers, next to India, was not lost sight of by the 
practical English people. 



XII. 

Imperial Arch. 

A patriotic American Committee has been formed to 
promote the building of a permanent imperialistic arch 
of America's soldiers. 

The model of this arch, under which the soldiers 
passed on their return, was regarded with pride, and 
pronounced a memorial fit to be translated into stone. 

One may ask why America sought an imperialistic 
model for such a purpose ? 

But this tendency of education in America is so to-day, 
and thus can autocracy and militarism impose their 
symbols on the people under the guise of a patriotic ideal. 

# # 

The old imperialistic Roman arches have replaced the 
simple floral arches of ancient days when it was an honour 
to the conqueror to pass beneath them — this was his 
glory. 

Modern Europe copied imperial Rome as the modern 
Caesars copied their ancestors. 

161 



Napoleon s glory built the Arc de Triomphe, that real 
~ d'aeuvre of arches. 

But America ought to have shown a republican spirit 
instead of copying imperialistic traditions, and adopted 
that classic republican and democratic style known as 
the Dorian. 

America should initiate ideas and not appropriate 
them. 

It is evident that autocratic inspiration and European 
influence tend to destroy initiative in America. 



XIII. 
Paris. 

The Paris of to-day is no longer the Paris of pre-war 
times. 

I lived there for several years before the war. 
During the first year of the war I saw the first bombs 
fall on the Rue Moscou with such destructive effect and 
loss of life. 

I shared the enthusiastic excitement during the French 
mobilization, and assisted at the Victory Parade on 
14th July, 19 1 9, when the French poilus received their 
due apotheosis. 

I recall the terrible night which witnessed the 
assassination of the French social leader Jaures, and 
with his death the stifling of the people's voice. 

War fanaticism began to brew dangers for the 
foreigners in Paris. 

Business became impossible owing to the moratorium 
and the control. 

Food ration regulations were drawn up waiting the 
issue of the battle of the Marne and in anticipation of a 
repetition of the siege of 1870. 

The Government left for Bordeaux, and we read a 
laconic address from General Gallieni, who was left as 
governor, and to take charge of the defence of the 
capital. 

162 



Already the trenches were prepared in the Avenue 
de Neuilly. 

The Germans were in sight of Paris. 

What happened ? Gradually the glad news 

filtered through, and the Government communicated 
the glorious tidings of victory. 

If a civil population may lay claim to the title heroic, 
then indeed the French population has made good its 
claim. 

Through tortures and privations, through humiliations 
and sacrifices, through an agony poignant and insistent, 
they passed, with a patience unsurpassed. 

* 
* * 

Paris in 1919 was a Paris of darkness. 

We arrived there at 11 p.m. 

Our meal, consisting of soup, a little vegetable, and 
a cup of coffee, cost us 34 francs. 

No sugar, only saccharine, no bread without a special 
ticket, no milk without a doctor's certificate, no tobacco 
without a patient wait in a queue before the tobacconist's 
door. A medium-sized bedroom in a third-class hotel 
could be secured for 45 francs a day ! ! 

A large number of American soldiers were still in 
Paris. 

American warehouses were overstocked with goods, 
such as foodstuffs, sugar, milk, etc., and while the French 
population was undergoing dire privation, the American 
Expeditionary Forces were being supplied abundantly 
with everything. 

Resentment was shown by many at this discrimina- 
tion. 

American generosity with the dollar spoilt the 
mentality of the French working-classes who came 
within its influence. 

# 

My friend, Mr. Brunswick, an ex-cowboy, now a well- 
known Filth-Avenue jeweller, the Pearl King as the 
Maitre a" Hotel,F rs.nco\s>,o( the Cafe de Paris used to call 
him, never sat to dinner in any Parisian restaurant 

163 



without disbursing liberal " tips " and by mistake one 
day was on the point of tipping the proprietor of one of 
the biggest restaurants. 

Mr. Brunswick is not the only American who is open- 
handed in this way. 

European waiters say of their American patrons that 
they are the best customers, that they understand life, 
and that they have a talent for the " tip ! ! " 

Mr. Brunswick considers Europe in the light of an 
artificial proposition — f< there is no money in it." 

* 

# # 

Restaurants, cabarets, theatres, and other places of 
amusement were overcrowded by Americans. 

Fortunes were accumulated from their dollars, and 
their generosity left behind an ineffaceable souvenir. 

But unfortunately there was a reverse side to the 
picture. 

This well-intentioned generosity gave rise to jealousy 
on the part of French people who saw attentions to which 
they were accustomed transferred to the Americans. 

Friction between American soldiers and French 
civilians became very frequent. 

Many crimes were brought home to American soldiers, 
calling down on their heads a rather severe judgment 
from the European press, but the best informed opinion 
considered that the amount of crime was by no means 
abnormal in view of the many nationalities composing 
the American army. 

XIV. 

The effects of the American films in Europe were 
sometimes disastrous. 

They produced many imitators among impressionable 
youthful spectators, and "hold-up" incidents are now so 
frequent as to cause serious trouble to the police 
authorities. 

While in America the good features in the film 
exhibition alone appealed to American youth so as to 

164 



compel imitation ; in Europe youth is not sufficiently 
emancipated to be independent of the effect caused by 
impressive films. 



XV. 

I like to hear Europeans express their opinions about 
Americans. 

In Paris, at my hotel Rue Cambon, there were very 
many American soldiers. 

The hotel is somewhat old-fashioned, and the bath- 
room had fallen into disuse. 

The American boys insisted on having some necessary 
repairs to the bath executed, and in using it freely. 

These devils, said the proprietor to me one day, are 
healthy, strong, and generous. They bring us any 
amount of things, such as sugar, preserved fruits, candies, 
and cigarettes. They pay any price we ask and never 
trouble to look at the bill, but they have one damned fault, 
they use too mtich water, they are always in the bathroom. 
In order to discourage such frequent bathing I increased 
the price of the baths, but I found it made no difference — 
they paid smilingly. 

When I enlightened my French friend on the 
American point of view with regard to water, he 
seemed quite surprised. 

Why, said he, here you must have a doctor's pre- 
scription in order to have baths ! 



XVI. 

An American friend remarked to me recently in Paris 
that he thought Europeans unreasonable, and that they 
were asking too much from the Americans. 

Why should we, said he, give them what we made by 
working. 

War was their own business, and when it started 
to be our business we did our part well. 

i6 5 



These remarks were in answer to some extravagant 
suggestions of mine made expressly to teaze him, and 
hinting that his altruistic country should make the Allies 
a present of their debt. 

He became rather excited at my proposal, and I had 
to offer as an excuse that I spoke from a point of view 
unfamiliar to him. 



I am a European, and from atavism consider every 
American a millionaire, and every American girl a rich 
bride. 

I was accustomed to see the emigrants leave my 
country poor and ill-clad, and after the lapse of a few 
years to see the dollars return in streams to help 
the parents and relatives in the homeland, and when 
the emigrant returned to view the scenes of his youth 
he came dressed in the fashion, and sporting gold in his 
watch, his rings, and even in his teeth. 

It was a hobby of mine as a boy to collect your beautiful 
American stamps. 

I dreamt of America as an El Dorado, an earthly 
paradise, where being a millionaire was a profession, 
such as that of a duke in Russia, or a pasha in Turkey. 

But the pity of it ! 

We could not go to America to do our studies. 

Our parents told us America was a place for emigrants 
only, for our servants, our slaves, and that we of the 
better classes might not go there. 

We might go to Paris, Berlin, or London, but not to 
New York ! 

Going to America was the last thought of my life. 

I was, however, somewhat superstitious, and felt I could 
make little headway in Europe with my books and 
diplomas, and so decided to become an emigrant. 

The professions in Europe are full to repletion. 

Lawyers and doctors in Europe are as numerous as 
bootblacks and peanut dealers in America, with this great 
difference, that the latter live in America under the 
inspiration of hope, while in Europe the former are, if 

166 



not hopeless, at least, in the position of having little 
to which to look forward. 

In the States I met many of my old school fellows, 
and some others who had been servants in my home. 
All were happy and prosperous. 

Had they remained at home their existence would 
have been of the hardest. 

I further reminded my friend that his President's 
views were absolutely in support of my suggestions, and 
called to his mind some of Wilson's abstruse moral 
doctrines and principles. 

I reminded him further that America's real policy was 
generosity, and that to-day her policy is speculation. 

XVII. 
To my Friend AS. 

I spent a short time in a private boarding house close 
to the Luxembourg Garden, where some others of the 
guests were American soldiers. 

I met one fine American boy from Michigan, a law 
student, and we passed many pleasant evenings together 
in the Restaurant du Pantheon in the Latin Quarter. 

At this time every place of entertainment was crowded 
with American boys. 

The French girls were quite smitten with them, and 
the French boys were quite out of court. 

The dreams of many of these French girls were 
realised to the full with the magic talisman — the dollar. 

To them the American Express Co.'s traveller checks 
became so attractive that the French bank notes lost 
value in their eyes. 

So they received a business education side by side 
with a sentimental one. 

One day, as my American friend and I were sitting in 
our cafe, there sat beside us two attractive French girls. 
One of these fell in love at first sight with my young 
friend, and as love dares all things they soon became 
acquainted. 

i6 7 



This acquaintance was a true education for the girl, 
as she learned for the first time the meaning of 
respect, generosity, and sincerity. 

She was a simple artificial flower worker earning 
eight francs a day, but finding her work unprofitable and 
exacting, she decided on the so-called easy life of the 
streets, a life which is both the ideal and the grave of 
so many girls in gay Paris. 

The example and good principles of my young friend 
so appealed to her that she decided to return once more 
to her work, and he supported her generously in her 
efforts to lead a straight life. 

I had an opportunity of meeting many Americans 
belonging to the expeditionary forces. 

Only a certain class of the French people knew them 
well and understood them. 

Regardless of some unfortunate happenings, which 
caused a good deal of misunderstanding and criticism 
amongst Europeans, American manhood has undoubtedly 
exerted a healthy moral influence on the continent, and 
it will be difficult for the degenerate higher classes to 
undo its good effect. 

From the moral standpoint I consider the American 

advent in Europe as an epoch making event. 

# 
# # 

When America, under another Government, is able 

to join the Allies, and accomplish her mission, her moral 

pioneering will oblige those who have sought to discredit 

her mission to acknowledge the moral superiority of the 

American nation. 



1 68 



EPILOGUE. 



Epilogue. 

France under Napoleon was the terror of Europe, as 
was Germany under William Hohenzollern, but while 
Napoleon was a true soldier, William was only a 
business man in a military uniform. 

He was the imperial salesman of a business nation. 

British policy, self-controlled and disciplined, brought 
to nought Napoleon's Utopian dreams and William's 
boundless ambitions, thereby transforming two powerful 
Empires into Republics, and assuring her own interests 
and safety. 

German policy was the control of the world's trade, 
supported by a powerful militarism. 

It was the policy of Caesar in modern form. 

To-day Germany's debacle leaves a vacant place for 
the nation that would pursue a policy of terror, and 
America, in the eyes of the world, seems ready to fill 
that place in a new form. 

A new war period began for humanity when America 
assumed the role of a military power. 

When a gang of golden autocrats transform a peace- 
loving nation into an arsenal, and a brotherly united 
international population into camps of warring national- 
ities, when hate and revenge are the prevailing national 
ideals, then the League of Nations becomes nonsensical 
and ridiculous. 



171 




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